Senate committee blames Murray Energy and MSHA for mine disaster

Alex Cabrero reporting Six miners died last August in Central Utah's Crandall Canyon coal mine, and three more died trying to rescue them. Now, a Senate committee, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, is calling for a criminal investigation into what went wrong.

Kennedy's group wants the Justice Department to investigate Murray Energy, the company in charge of the mine when it collapsed. A report released Thursday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had some key findings:

• Murray Energy failed to make sufficiently conservative engineering assumptions and ignored the history of the mine's instability.
• Murray Energy ignored substantial evidence of instability during mining operations and continued mining until stopped by a powerful bounce.
• MSHA ignored red flags that should have prompted an exacting review of mining operations, the most obvious being the March "bounce" that closed the north barrier.
• Evidence uncovered by the investigation reflects that Murray Energy was illegally mining the remnant barrier pillar just before the accident in August.

However, Murray Energy's co-owner, Utah American Energy, is fighting back. In a statement released Thursday, the company calls the report "politically motivated, irresponsible and unjustifiable."

It says, "It is clear that the Senate HELP Committee report is precipitous and wrong. It is obviously political grandstanding to certain constituents and some of its members." It goes on to say, "Mr. Murray and the company would never knowingly expose any employee to danger... For anyone to imply otherwise is blatantly false."

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says the federal government's non-partisan mine safety commission at the Labor Department is best equipped to investigate the matter. "Their report will come out later this year. We've just got to wait until all the facts are in before we decide what action should be taken. And to do anything else at this point would be simply premature," he said.

Sen. Hatch did say he appreciates the study from Sen. Kennedy's office. The investigation has been going on a long time. Family members of those miners are anxious to finally hear what the report has to say. Some are happy to finally hear someone say what they've been thinking all along. Others feel Kennedy shouldn't have said anything until MSHA completes its investigation.

Hilary Gordon has been mayor for less than a year, but in that year, she has dealt with more tragedy than most mayors ever will, and she's still comforting the families who lost loved ones in last August's mine collapse.

She says, "They're trying to move forward, but in the same token, it's hard for them to do that given all of the things that are going on in their lives."

Those things include a potential legal battle, ongoing investigations into the mine collapse, and hearing what Sen. Kennedy said Thursday about how the Justice Department should get involved and hand out jail sentences.

"I just wonder if it's a little premature to make those kinds of statements until all of the facts are really on the table, at this point," Mayor Gordon said.

But the president of the local mine workers union, Mike Dalpiaz, says it's about time someone in congress spoke up. He said, "People need to go to jail over this thing. It was terrible mining practices, nobody did a thing about it. We are so excited somebody has finally listened a little bit to what we're saying."

Keep in mind, the Crandall Canyon mine was not a union mine.

The attorney representing the families, Ed Havas, will not go that far but he did read Thursday's report. He said, "I think that anybody who reads is it going to be brought up a little bit short at how dangerous the circumstances were and how many opportunities there were to avoid this tragedy."

He says, even though not all the facts are known, some are. "The amount of evidence that existed that there were dangerous conditions and that what was going on should not have gone on, is pretty compelling. It's just, you cannot ignore it."

And it is hard to ignore what Sen. Kennedy had to say. Mayor Gordon says the families are just happy he's supporting them. "They felt that he was very much for them and spoke up for them at the time when they were back in Washington," she said.

There's still no word on when MSHA will complete the investigation. Residents in Huntington and Carbon and Emery counties are waiting for the investigation but are going forward with plans of a memorial at the mine regardless.

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