 We as a species have sought out to harvest as much fuel as possible for the industrial machine known as the modern world. We do this in a multitude of ways, but most often it involves burrowing below the Earth's surface. The living of millions of years past are now the thing that powers your toaster. It's great to be in the modern world, you don't usually need to even think about boiling a kettle or driving a car. But these conveniences come at a big cost, of course it's in the air that we breathe and the environment we inhabit, but also a much more direct human cost. A subject I don't often cover will be the focus of today's video and that is of mining. And just how dangerous, even in the 2010s it can be for workers. So welcome to play difficult. My name is John and today we're looking at the upper branch mine disaster. Background So before we start I should say that this video will be based off the official report into the disaster as well as some other reports and contemporary newspapers and as always the link is will be in the description below. Today's video will start and finish here at the upper big branch mine in Ranley County, West Virginia. The site of the mine was acquired in 1994 by a company called the Performance Coal Company from the Peabody Coal Company. The company was a subsidiary of Massey Energy and would handle the operations of exploiting the Eagle Seam on a newly acquired site. Mining began in 1994, but it would get a massive spike in production in 1998 when the site began a thing called long wall mining. Now previously we've discussed room and pillar method of mining that is digging out and creating a cross pattern where columns of unmined material are left to support the roof. All good but not the most efficient. Only roughly around 60% of the available coal is exploited, but there is an alternative which yields a much higher 80% and that is called the long wall. This mining method allows for a long continuous section of rock to be extracted, kind of like slicing a cake compared to digging out holes in it. The panel, basically the face of rock being mined, is passed over by a machine called a shearer. As it runs past the panel face it extracts with its blades the rock which is then dumped onto a conveyor belt for processing away from the panel. This method is considered to be a little bit safer to room and pillar as the area the shearer works along is protected by a hydraulic power roof support that shields the workers from any potential cave in. As the shearer advances along the panel and cuts more and more rock away the whole system pushes forward. The void left behind then collapses in behind it, creating an area known as the gulf. Needless to say this has one big drawback, that is you are creating unstable ground, which if you are living above the mine could be potentially dangerous as it causes subsidence. Anywho, when the other big branch mine began using the long wall mining method, tonnage of coal really shot up. Just look at this semi-accurate graph. I should say that the site did use room and pillar mining as well, now regardless of the mining method we should also say that gases can be released and the most concerning of which was methane as described by the EPA. Methane gas in coal formations was generated at the same time the coal was formed, when plant debris such as that found in swamps slowly changed into coal after being buried and covered for a long time through a process known as coalification. Clearly this is a danger as every teenage boy knows methane is flammable. Now ventilation is employed to try and help with gas buildups and the upper big branch mine had three fans running, two blowing and one exhausting, moving a total of 1,013,900 cubic feet of air per minute. Brick walls guided the air throughout the mine and airtight doors were employed to separate exhaust and inlet air. But another way to stop gas inundations was to seal off previously mined areas over the years. Panels were exploited and the gobs were blocked off. So over the years the long wall panels were mined and by 2006 the long wall mining equipment was sent off to another mine. However issues at its new home brought the long wall equipment back to the upper big branch mine earlier than anticipated in 2009. This brought on some issues in fact the mine had not been properly prepared for this as noted in the West Virginia report into the later incident. Ventilation and water drainage issues had not been completely resolved prior to the long wall being put back into production at the UBB in September 2009. So as the long wall worked in the mine 2009 production rates increased until as we see on this graph a sudden drop in 2010. So what caused this? The disaster. So it's bingo card time. Our narrative begins around Easter 2010. The mine had been shut down for the holiday. It's Sunday the 4th of April. The evening shift booked on and began getting the mine ready for coal production for the Monday morning. Before any workers could enter, fire bosses had to inspect the mine. This involved checking for methane and carbon monoxide as well as the ventilation and examination of any other systems to find any hazards. All at good. Apart from a few hazards noted by two of the five bosses these were accumulation of water in places and haul roads needing some cleaning. So the first shift was for maintenance and parts of the shearer on the long wall were replaced. After the maintenance shift the mine was pre-shifted for the coal production crew who would begin on the Monday morning. Again no serious methane or carbon monoxide was found. Day shift workers entered the mine at around 6am. The long wall began operations at around 7am and throughout the day would experience a few issues requiring it to have its shearer bits replaced. As the afternoon bit in pre-shift inspections began for the evening's crews. Again no serious methane or carbon monoxide was reported. It was getting close to 3pm and most of the workers in the mine thought it would be like any other day. Until on the surface something strange happened. At roughly 302pm a system computer recorded the communications lost with a carbon monoxide monitor near the long wall. Every 30 minutes the various crews around the mine were required to do a call-out report. The long head was rung on the mine telephone at around 3pm but no answer. Shortly after on the surface a boom rang out from the depths of the mine. Dust and smoke started pouring out of the mine's north portals. The working carbon monoxide alarms began well alarming to higher levels. Work in other parts of the mine felt a strong breeze. At the time of the explosion some crew members were returning to the surface on a thing called a man trip. One crew's man trip stopped but was able to be restarted. Unfortunately another closer to the explosion stopped working knocking some of the crew unconscious. After around 15 minutes post explosion dispatchers began ordering and evacuation of the mine. Around 25 minutes after the explosion some crew members re-entered the mine from the north and Ellis portals. Some were rescued and three man trips were recovered to the surface. At 7.42pm two teams from the mine's operations parent company Massey Energy and two state inspectors entered the mine at the north portal following the conveyor belt to the number 21 long wall. During this time six deceased miners were located as the team moved along the head wall face six more were discovered. Over the evening different rescue teams would search the mine. At 11.55pm a man trip was discovered near the 22 head gate section where another six victims were found. However the search and rescue operation would be cut short as increasing levels of methane were being detected and at 12.45am all teams were ordered to retreat. No recovery operations could happen on the Tuesday due to the methane levels however over the following days access was allowed and the remaining missing bodies were removed and by Friday 29 were confirmed dead but now with the bodies recovered the cause had to be discovered the investigation. So entry to the mine for investigators was restricted due to the heightened levels of methane and carbon monoxide however interviews of survivors could be undertaken in the intermediate months. Eventually the MHSA would gain access to the site and the cause of the explosion would become clear. Investigators found another number of concerning issues with the upper big branch mine including at the tailgate end of the long wall a build up of methane due to inadequate ventilation. It was found that this build up of methane was the initiating event that caused an explosion which then developed into a coal dust explosion. They were able to find this out by tracing the fire's direction back to the long wall face at the tailgate. Autopsy of the victims interestingly found no methane poisoning which hinted at the amount of methane present at the explosion site being relatively small but it was enough to set off a coal dust explosion. It was also found that the flames hadn't spread across the long wall panel. The MHSA suggested that an initial methane explosion pushed coal dust into the air which then created a secondary explosion. They would even say this in their report. The resulting methane explosion propagated through the first out by crosscut before the methane was consumed. However the methane explosion suspended and ignited float coal dust and coal dust and the propagation of the coal dust explosion commenced. The flame zone from the coal dust explosion was extensive. If all the flame throughout the workings had resulted from the ignition of methane then the explosion pressures would have exceeded the constant volume explosion pressure of around 120 psi in all areas of the explosion zone which they did not. This indicates that the explosion was a result of coal dust propagation and not of methane alone. So the physical cause of the explosion was discovered but the investigation would find a far more sinister cause and that was in the way that the mine was managed. The MHSA found that Massey actively threatened staff if they tried to report any safety issues to the government regulator. The company would also actively suppress any accidents and on top of that staff were not trained properly. The company also failed to perform required mine examinations and also failed to maintain the upper big branches mines long wall shearer. It was also found that during inspections that the ventilation system was altered to give better airflow and even disabled some methane monitors for the use of official inspections. The company had a terrible track record of safety violations with 1,342 building up in the five years before the explosion at this mine site alone. Between the years 1997 and 2004 there were three known gas leaks at the upper big branch mine one of which led to a small explosion. Clearly Massey were not that bothered about the safety of their staff and the MHSA would reflect this with hitting alpha resources the company that ended up buying out Massey with a 10.8 million civil fine plus a 209 million fine for the department of justice settlement. The Massey COO Donald Leon Blakenship would be charged with and convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards and ended up serving one year in prison. He claimed he was a political prisoner but I would claim he's a prick. So bingo card time I think we nearly have a full sheet here. I'm also going to give the disaster a five on my scale due to the massive amounts of balls-ups from Massey. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments below. Here's to plain and full production. All videos on the channel have created comments that we should share like licensed. Plain and full videos produced by me John in the currently very cold corner of southern London UK. 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