 A massive roof fall occurred involving six coal miners resulting in three fatalities and three miners trapped. Here is a story from one of the survivors who had less than one month of mining experience. Larry, just kind of talk us through and tell us your story. From the start of the shift, bring us up to where we're going now. Well, it was pretty much well a day like any other day. We was all just having fun and carrying on prior to the shift. We went inside. We was setting up a new section that day. We just finished a left-hand panel and was backing up and was going to drive the mains up a little bit farther as best as I can recall. We had a few jobs we had to do. We would take a cut, back out, let the boulder go in and bolt it up. We had a lot of things to do that day so everybody was pretty busy. We got it up far enough for the first line of breakthroughs. We're running 101 Jeffery with bridges behind it. We turned a left-handed cross cut and backed out and they were bolting it up. When they got everything in there good enough for all the equipment to clear, they started turning the right handbrake. As they were turning the right handbrake in, the roof came in on us. When you turned that in, had you stopped for lunch or what activity was actually going on at the time that the fall occurred? If you saw any kind of a warning that something may not have been just right or something a little unusual or abnormal that you noticed just prior to the time the roof fall occurred? We had eaten and come back and took the right hand cut. While we were taking the right hand cut, the bolt crew ate their lunch and they had just come back from lunch. I was positioned, myself, sort of between the bolt crew and the minor bridge as they were turning the cut in. I think it's a real good point to bring out right now that at the time I was a red hat. There was a whole lot of stuff that I didn't know and didn't fully understand and was learning at the time. I was sitting on the rib waiting for everything to get started so that I could start shoveling my bridge, which was my job at the time. There was a piece of coal that fell with a little bit of force and hit me on the back. I was looking around to see if anybody was horse playing or what have you and was throwing rocks at me. I couldn't see anybody who was in a position to do that. I really didn't know what was going on. Still yet, I thought if there was anybody throwing any rocks, if I'd get just a little bit closer to that minor, they wouldn't be able to hit me or anything. So I got just a little bit closer and another one hit me. I really didn't know what was going on yet, but I couldn't see anybody throwing any rocks or any position to throw any rocks. A lot of things while I was in my red hat experience come to mind about the 80 hour red hat class that I had taken. The instructor that we had kept telling us about different times that he had been in falls in different situations where he was near piles of timbers or the track or a piece of machinery. It would keep the fall from smashing him down enough to really hurt him bad. Since I was in an awkward situation, I really didn't know what was going on. I decided to get just one more step closer to that minor. It was kind of low call while I was crawling, so I got out there just a little bit closer to that bridge. As I got closer to that time, it was when the roof fell in and had us trapped. My head was turned sideways and it was close enough to the bridge and there was a little deck stuck out on the side of the bridge. It was about a foot or so wide and my head was over top of that when it fell. The top had fell down and pinned my head on top of that little deck. The weight of the rock on my back shoved my legs and stuff up into my stomach to where I couldn't move. The closest person to me at the time was Bobby, the bolt machine operator. I was yelling at him to come and help me because it really hadn't sunk in yet just exactly what was going on and how bad. My head was pinned in my hat and I had to wiggle my head back and forth to get it out of my hat. Then I wiggled my hat back and forth to get it loose and it was busted up around the side and I put it on and still yet no one had answered me. The weight of the top on my back and stuff had me pinned so that I couldn't raise up to get my feet free. There was a little bit of spillage and I dug it out from around my knee pads and flattened my legs out sideways so that I could straighten them out. The bridge that we had, the sump on the miner moved in and out and the sump happened to be back and it created a little place from the back bumper on the miner back to the bridge that was just a little narrow place. Looking up at that steel was a whole lot more appealing to me than looking up at that rock so I climbed up and under it and bowled up real tight. I was scared, didn't know what to do and stuff and just laid there and waited. It seemed like I laid there my time. It seemed like it lasted forever but then it didn't seem like it lasted at all at the same time. I know that's really weird to say but it's hard to remember just exactly how much time took place and went by. It seemed like there was a little time that went by and Donzel started hollering and I could hear him hollering. He was asking me really important questions. He really kept his cool. He was asking me, did they shut the water off? Did they turn the power off? Stuff like that that was for someone to be trapped in there, I thought, wow. I wasn't thinking about stuff like that. I was just thinking about getting out. Then the people who was outside the fall, I could hear them hollering and talking. So we relayed messages back and forth. Donzel couldn't hear the rescuers coming so he would ask me the questions. I would relay it to them and then we'd relay the answers back. There was about seven and a half hours I think that was just laying there waiting for him to come and get me. Another thing, I remember that they got a little hole there and they stuck their head in. They said, are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm fine. They said, we'll just hang tight there and we'll come and get you. I said, well, I think I can make it. I stuck my head through and they showed me back in and said, let us make a hole just a little bit bigger. So they dug another 45 minutes or so and then I had to take my belt off to make it through. So I don't think I could have made it through that first hole. Why, what do you contribute to surviving that riff fall to? More than anything else, the greatest single factor was the fact that the man who taught me in the Red Hat class kept telling us all the stories of things that happened to him and that he always happened to be lucky enough to be near a pile of timbers or track or something that would keep this rock off of him. And even though I really didn't know what was going on at the time, that caused me to get a little bit closer to the minor and stuff which put me in a position so that the machinery held the rock off of me. And I'm convinced of that very sure that that's what made me get out there without a scratch. Could you tell us what you think now and how you may react now if you was in a seminar situation? At the time, well, in the class that we had in the Red Hat class, they had talked a lot about dribble and I really didn't understand exactly at the time what it was. I guess that's one of the questions I should ask. Maybe I could have made a difference there. But if this similar situation happened now, I definitely would pull myself out and make sure that everybody come back out so that we could watch the situation to see what was working. I wish I would have understood then that these little pieces of rock and stuff falling from the edge as indication that something bigger is moving. Larry, if you would, you mentioned something about being a horse player. Horse play was kind of normal when you felt those rock hit your back or your hard hat. If you would just kind of expand on that and give us a little explanation as to why you didn't pay as much attention as you may should have when you felt those rock hit you. Well, all of us who worked there together, we've all known each other for years and we've always been good friends and stuff. The whole situation around there, we wasn't in a position where we could get hurt. We was all just friends being together and stuff. There was a lot of horse play going on and stuff. But people really need to keep in mind that every little thing makes a difference when you're dealing with your life. And of course anytime you're underground, that should be everyone's most major concern. And the rock throwing and stuff, when we were sitting around eating dinner everybody was doing the knuckle shuffle. You know, hitting each other's knuckles with the rocks and stuff and tees and stuff. But everything has its place and the horse play shouldn't be underground. Or any job site really for that matter where you're working around machinery. And if there had been less horse play there could have been maybe the chance that we would have seen what these rocks were coming from and stuff and realized that it was something way more major than just someone playing a little game. I really hope that people just watching this really take into consideration the things that's being said because I really hope that no one else has to live through some of the things that Don's will and I have. These conditions and practices were noted after the accident. A proved roof control plan was not followed. The roof control plan required at least 80% of the boat length to be grounded. The boats in the roof fall area were less than 50% grounded along the length of the boats. Test holes were not drilled. On the day of the accident, roof boat machine operators could not recall drilling a test hole during boating operations. Change in the mine roof. It could not be determined prior to the roof fall if fractures were present in the roof. Head cold was not removed due to an increase in cold seam height. A miner had less than one month experience. Small pieces of rock pulling from the mine roof struck the inexperienced miner who thought someone was flipping rocks at him as had happened in the past during horse play. The approved roof control plans are only for minimum protection. Every effort should be made to determine if additional steps need to be taken to ensure that adequate roof support is provided at all times for the safety of our coal mining.