 Jack Castille was running a D9 bulldozer on top of the coal surge piles at Mingo Logan's Black Bear preparation plant. Jack was pushing coal away from the truck dump area to make room and piling it over the feeders in preparation for loading a train. The coal is removed by four feeders located under the piles that draw off the coal and dump it onto an underground conveyor belt for loading into a unit train. Jack was not aware that before the day was half over, he would be buried in this surge pile. It was 10 o'clock or so in the morning. The sun was bright and I looked way up on the pile and thought I'd seen a hole. So I just was pushing to it to break it on in. It wasn't actually a hole, it was just a cavity up there where I'd pushed and dropped off a load of coal the day before. And when I got to the top of the pile, Bob Bennington, he hollered and said that the feeder had went empty. When I hollered at Jack to tell him that the feeder had stopped feeding, I looked out the wind and I could see the corner of the blade over the pile and I realized at that instant that he was too far up. But at that time he disappeared out of sight. He fell almost instantaneously. I proceeded over to call on the radio. He said that something I couldn't understand what he said. I repeated my question. I said, I asked him, what did he say? And then that's when I told him, I said, well, I'm in the feeder hole. Big time. We have balls over top of the feeder holes to tell you where they're at. When you're back away from it, you've got to be able to look up and in your mind draw a vertical line exactly where that's going to hit. And once you ramp it up, though, the angle sometimes is deceiving. The sun plus the angle of the pile, it all led into a factor. And plus as I was going up, I didn't have any idea that it was bridged over. And I put it in reverse and the next thing I knew, I was in the hole. The dozer turned straight up, the hole falling around me. I had my seatbelt on and it's kind of similar to taking a roller coaster ride except in reverse. It was about a 30 foot depot. Dozer at that time, they thought was completely covered up, which actually turned out not to be the case. It was partially covered. The blade of the dozer was all you could see and it was probably six or eight feet down in the co-pile. And all you could see was the blade. It looked like the dozer was kind of on its top, but the dozer was probably about 80 degrees or so on the vertical. So the dozer wasn't exactly all the way over on its top or standing straight up. It was kind of at an angle a little bit. I knew as long as the cold didn't cave in on me that there was no life-threatening danger at that point. Had the cold came in, then it had been a double-difference situation. When we started talking to him, after talking to him a few minutes, we determined that he could open the right door of the dozer. We elected to get him out of the dozer. I just didn't have the heart to man it could see daylight and could open a door and I could get to him and tell him we was going to cover him up because we had no idea what his frame of mind was or if he would panic or what. So we elected to get him out before we tried to recover the dozer. And in doing so, we used an excavator, secured a rope ladder on it with a safety belt on the end of it. We dropped it down to him. We told him that we would like for him to open the door just enough to get his safety belt, put it on, tie himself off to the rope ladder first. And then once he was securing on the ladder to radio us and we would lift him out of there and that's what we did. And I had in my mind that once I got on that ladder, if the coals did start coming in, I wasn't going to hang around down there and wait on them to pull me out. I was coming out of there. When the ladder was coming up out of the hole, it was really tense and as soon as that hat came above the crest of the coal, everybody on that platform started cheering and clapping and especially me. I was the inspector on site. I was thrilled that he came out there uninjured. Your worst nightmare is to get a man killed on the job. It was relief to see him coming out of the dozer. It was a good hard hit, but I took it throughout my body. I mean, had I not had the high back bucket seat with the headrest on it, it would have probably whiplashed me real bad. This was one of the dozers that had the airplane glasses, super strength, high PSI. When the dozer went down in the pile, the weight of the dozer and the force of the coal just smashed that cage up against the glass. It didn't even put a scratch on that glass at all. So the whole force of the machine was sitting on that glass. It's kind of amazing that it didn't even crack it or anything. In addition to the glass, we put in a backup communication system. We have a citizen's band radio in every dozer. We also have a company band radio. In addition to that, our people working on the stockpile, they're required to have a handheld company band radio. We put two self-contained self-rescue units in each dozer in case that we would have a person trapped in there for an extended amount of time. Another safeguard that we put in that was part of the requirement of the law was we have automatic shutoffs for all the belts and feeders on the stockpile. Ours are remote controlled. They're carried by the operator so that if he moves from one machine to the other, he carries that with him. It basically cost $16,000 per machine to put the glass into it. With the other additions, we probably had somewhere near $20,000 per machine total. And we feel like that we got that back many times over on March the 6th. Indeed, everybody involved, Phil's Jack was unfortunate to have been disoriented by the angle of the slope and the glare of the sun. He was unfortunate to end up in the hole big time. However, he was fortunate for the extra protection provided by the company. He was fortunate to walk away on hurt. And maybe he was fortunate to be able to see the sun rise the next point. Avoiding surge pile accidents requires a combination of good safety practices and effective training of surge pile workers. The windows of dozer cabs can be made to withstand burial pressure by a combination of installing supports for the glass, improving the edge support for the glass, and using high strength window material such as chemically strengthened glass. As an alternative to providing a cab strong enough to resist burial pressure, technology is now available to allow the use of remote controlled equipment on surge piles. Provide self-contained self rescuers, dual radio communications, and backup lighting. For example, flashlights with spare batteries or chemical lights. Capability to shut down the feeder and stacker belt from the cab can be provided by a radio control that is located in the cab and activated by the operator pressing a button. The location of feeders should be clearly marked such as by using large markers suspended directly above the feeder locations. A system of lights can be used to indicate when the feeder is activated. A high powered light shining down on the feeder location would be effective for nighttime operations. Operators should wear their seatbelts at all times. They should keep the doors and windows closed. When pushing material to a draw hole, equipment operators should always push directly toward the feeder location. Equipment operators should be instructed not to get off of their equipment while it is on a surge pile. Post warning signs around the surge pile to identify the danger area. Adequate illumination should be provided for operations after dark. There should be provisions for radio communication between everyone who either works on the pile, affects the pile, or supervises pile operations. For a detailed list of best practices on surge piles, you can go to our website at www.msha.gov. www.msha.gov.