Crandall Canyon disaster may lead to huge settlement

VANCOUVER–Among other defendants, American coal giant Murray Energy wants to settle out of court a complaint filed against it by families of victims who died or were injured in the Crandall Canyon mine disaster in Utah, says the families’ lawyer Colin King.

King says the case has been filed in the third district of Salt Lake City, Utah, against the owners and coowners of Genwal, the Crandall Canyon mine operator, and engineering firm Agapito Associates. The owners and co-owners in the case are Murray Energy, Utah American Energy, Intermountain Power Agency, Andalex Resources and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“All the defendants came tous and they want to settle the case before we engage in a lot of sensitive discovery,” King says. “And so we’re exchanging information preparatory to having a mediation meeting — probably in November.”

Early August marked the disaster’s first anniversary. On Aug. 6, 2007, six miners died when a bounce so powerful it measured 3.9 on the Richter Scale rocked the mine and released an avalanche of coal down on top of the men.

Three more died 10 days later when two miners and an employee of the U. S. Department of Labour, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) were crushed under rubble after another bump toppled pillars as they were attempting to reach miners they hoped were still alive.

Rescue workers suspended their marathon efforts after the second round of deaths. They turned to drilling boreholes to assess conditions where the trapped miners were last thought to have been working.

But results from those boreholes showed that barely half a foot of head space was left in tunnels where the men were working and that, even if the trapped miners had miraculously survived the avalanche of coal, the oxygen-deficient air would probably have asphyxiated them.

King is representing the surviving families of the six miners killed in the Aug. 6 disaster (Kerry Alfred, Don Erickson, Jose Luis Hernandez, Juan Carlos Payan, Brandon Philips and Manuel Sanchez), the two miners who died during rescue efforts (Dale Black and Brandon Kimber) as well as two men injured during those efforts (Joseph Bouldin and Casey Metcalf).

In the disaster’s aftermath, mine owner and president of Murray Energy, Robert Murray, a former coal miner himself, claimed that an earthquake caused the coal outburst.

But during the ensuing months, it became evident that the reverse was true: a catastrophic roof fall and pillar collapse caused the earthquake.

Two weeks ago, Murray’s version of events was officially rebuffed with the release of the MSHA’s accident investigation. The MSHA found that Genwal Resources and Agapito Associates, the engineering firm that designed the roof plan for the mine, were both to blame for the deadly collapse.

The finding resulted in the largest MSHA fines ever levied against a mining company in the United States: US$1.3 million against Genwal for violations that directly resulted in the deaths of the miners, and US$220,000 against Agapito for a faulty roof plan. Both companies can appeal the fines.

King calls the report “damning.” He says part of the reason the families he represents wanted to file suit against Crandall Canyon’s owners was to understand why the disaster happened in the first place.

King says that they have since learned “quite a bit” about its root causes from congressional reports and the MSHA’s findings.

At the heart of those findings is the MSHA’s assertion that Genwal did not contact it about three coal outbursts prior to the Aug. 6 accident. If it had, the MSHA contends, it may very well not have approved Genwal’s plan for retreat mining.

“MSHA’s investigation found that Genwal Resources recklessly failed to immediately report three previous coal outbursts that had occurred, two in March 2007 and one just three days before the August 6th accident,” says Richard Stickler, acting assistant secretary of labor for MSHA, in a statement. “These reporting failures were critical, because they deprived MSHA of the information it needed to properly assess the operator’s mining plans.”

Equally astonishing, the MSHA found that Genwal was retreat mining coal from pillars it had specifically told the company it should not touch. “This dangerously weakened the strength of the roof support,” Stickler says in the same statement.

In response to the MSHA fines, Murray’s son, the vice-president of business development and external affairs at Murray Energy and also named Robert Murray, wrote in an email that beyond Genwal’s written statement, “we have no further comments.”

In the statement, Genwal Resources says the MSHA did not have access to all the necessary information from experts on the disaster to support its decision and blames a congressional committee set up to investigate the disaster for the experts’ silence.

“The statements and subpoenas from members of Congress made plain that their own parallel investigations were directed more towards blame than finding the actual cause of the accident,” Genwal’s statement reads. “As a result, some of these experts refrained from speaking with MSHA and Congress.”

Although Genwal’s statement does not clarify who these experts are or what they knew, a number of high-ranking Murray Energy employees, Robert Murray (senior) included, invoked the Fifth Amendment and did not speak to a congressional committee.

This spring, the committee recommended that the Department of Justice, through its Utah attorney general Brett Tolman, investigate whether the Crandall Canyon mine general manager, Laine W. Adair, “individually or in conspiracy with others” covered up material that the MSHA should have known prior to the disaster — information that might have prevented it from approving a roof plan months prior to the collapse.

Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for Tolman, says the attorney general’s office is currently coordinating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate if there has been a violation of federal law in the case.

The FBI will make its recommendation to the attorney general, who in turn will make an independent decision, she says. She adds that it’s impossible to say when the attorney general will make a formal decision about whether to lay criminal charges.

Robert Gates, one of the lead accident investigators for the MSHA’s Crandall Canyon report, says he would not talk about Genwal’s statement or the MSHA report. AgapitoAssociates did not respond to emails and declined to comment by telephone.

As for the families represented by King, he says they’re willing to settle. “Everybody understands that if — and that’s a big if — we can do that, that it’s preferable to four or five years of litigation. All parties, the defendants and the families we represent, all agree on that.”

King’s office is compiling damage studies to see how much money to ask for. “It’s going to be a large, multimillion dollar settlement,” he says.