 On this edition of MSHA News, you're going to hear from a bulldozer operator who found himself sucked into a void on a feeder draw hole of a raw coal stockpile. Because of the safety features his company installed after a previous accident, Roger is alive to tell us his story. The piles were way up big and was probably somewhere in the area about 15 to 20 foot from the top of the truck dump where the trucks were coming in and dumping and the feeders weren't opening. One of them opened, number three feeder opened. So I was basically trying taking the coal from what the trucks were dumping and pushing it to the number three feeder and more or less trying to keep the truck drivers happy, keep them hot moving and keep a little bit of coal coming into the plant and I'd clean away from, clean as much as I could away from the wall and then I'd go back at digging at the number four feeder trying to open it up. Really there was more coal coming in than I could get rid of them in one feeder. So it piled up on me pretty good. So I started cutting towards, you know, cutting the pile away from the wall again towards the number three feeder because it was getting in my way, digging out the number four and the number four feeder had rat-holed out and I was, I just had pushed up to the number three feeder and went to reverse and when I started to move backwards the big cloud of dust started rolling and the dozer turned to the side, went into the feeder on its side. I guess the blade or whatever something turned to, let the dozer turn back around to where it was just sitting on its tail like that and after the dust cleared I had about maybe two foot of wind that I could still see out of and when I looked at it was like I was in a jug. Everything was just over top of the dozer and I was looking out through a hole so I just, you know, I just stayed, you know, stayed where I was at. I started hauling the control room operator and told him to shut feeders off on the FM radio. I grabbed a hold of the seat and pulled it forward as far as I could get it. I turned around backwards, put my back up against the window and pulled the pin on the self-rescuer door, dropped it out, got it, I'd shut the dozer off other than I left the air conditioning fan running so if, you know, if there's any air around the machine, you know, I could draw off of it rather than just worrying about the rescuer and basically you just sit there. I think they said I was in there for like an hour and 45 minutes. I was in my office and was informed by the plant foreman. We immediately got in a pickup truck and came to the sock pile on top where we could see what was going on. We got to the top, looked down, we could see the void in the pile and we could see the blade of the dozer about five or six feet below the surface of the cove. We were able to communicate with the operator. We could talk to him and he told us he was okay. He could see light and we told him what we were going to do. We called a loadout and we've got two more dozers up to the pile. We immediately began moving a cove away from him and when we started moving a cove away, the pile started breaking and it covered the dozer at that time before he couldn't see. So he had a self-rescuer out and had it ready. Nothing really fell in until I could feel the other dozer. He'd come in on the, started coming in on the pile when he did it. Everything jarred loose and finally it covered the dozer up. Almost positive that I could keep what was going to come through that window out. If I stayed where I was at, that the cab of the dozer wasn't going to fill up with coal. When I first went in, I still had about that much wind and as things progressed, the window was getting slowly but surely covered up and then finally it was the window covered up and then I felt the pile give and you'd feel the dozer move. It was just kind of a thud and then I knew the rest of the pile was coming in on top of me. With communication, I could talk Roger all the time while I was climbing on the pile. The time I got to where he was at to the top, then I was above him so I could look down and see the blade and part of the cab and then I talked to him and I see it started digging him out. Your man has a lot of time to think when he's actually that close to death. I just stayed real calm and tried to control myself enough to where I didn't get real excited and thought about my kids, my wife. The glass was already breaking in that's crushing through the doors and they basically just had to finish breaking the glass out. I was torn as above and just get me out of here and he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me through the door. Coal stock piles probably is the most dangerous situation that we have in a coal industry today. We did a lot of things after the first accident which was in the clean coal pile. We created some more ideas by having the trucks to stop dumping, concentrating on the one feeder that was giving us a problem. When the man was rescued, we came back to the stock piles and we started to evaluate and at that time we put balls directly above the feeders to mark exactly where the feeder was so when the stock pile would be high that we would know underneath because when the piles get high you'd have no way to really tell exactly where it's at but the ball hanging directly over helps it. We also installed lights of telling us which feeder was running. That would give all outside personnel that would be on the property would not be familiar with this operation. They would know which feeders are running so that they would know which ones to stay away from. Also, we went inside our tunnels at the feeder where the draw holes inside. We placed switches that would automatically cut the feeder off if the coal would put feeding down if it would go empty that would be blocked off so we would know it was blocked it would automatically shut the feeder off. We put cameras on the stock pile so we could monitor the dozers. We have three different radio communications in the dozer so that the man if one radio would fail or antenna was knocked off he would still have radio communication with someone because he has with the supervisor he has with other mobile equipment and he has with the control room so that gives him the communication to be able to get a hold of someone. Each dozer on the job we have a self-rescuer that is located in a compartment directly above the operator's head so that he doesn't have to look for it. Pulls it down there's a flashlight and the self-rescuer is located in a compartment where it's easy to access to the operator of the equipment. It's part of the operator's job each day when he checks his equipment out he has a pre-op checklist. He also checks to make sure that this hasn't been tampered with hasn't been open hasn't been used so that way he knows that it's in good shape. He has a pinned flashlight kept in there so that he'll have light in case of darkness. Some of the operators even go as far enough to go ahead and even store extra sets of batteries for the flashlight to have it. This is in each piece of equipment that we have to assure that the operator will have this self-rescuer to be able to use. We added extra glass into the dozer we've got a special glass that's made big bigger than the opening that's supposed to be. It won't cave in but you can kick it out if you're if you're fouled in the dozer. In the event that you have stock piles get large you have weather changes you have dozers working and you're not running a pile but you have to push the cold and you are going to get feeders that will be plugged up and you have to go back and open them but the main concern is to be sure that we're safe when we do it and have every possible means of making sure that we don't get someone hurt or get someone in a feeder. You get into a situation like that you you kind of look at you know what's gonna it's gonna help me survive longer you know staying calm is going to conserve the air that's in the cab stay calm. If you're on that stock pile and you see you're going out of hold set tight absolutely do not get out of that dozer don't even attempt it because you try to get out of that thing and get behind it or under the cold falls on you there's no chance for you. Stay stay in the dozer because you come out you may go through the feeder you may get under the dozer you don't know we don't know how to dig for you if you you're out of the cab we don't know how to shove or push forward to try to get you out stay in the dozer. I believe you stay in it you'll stay alive. When we have this problem on the stock pile and we know the feeders plug we're very very much leaning toward the remote control dozer to open that hole up not having a human in it. It will happen and it'll happen again I know it will somewhere in the country somebody will get in a coal pile with a with a piece of equipment. In the last 10 years there have been four fatalities involving bulldozers falling into surge piles. Some of these fatalities could have been prevented if the safety ideas presented in this video were followed. Charts can be used to indicate the stockpiled materials angle of draw and to suggest the safest working distance from the draw hole. Remember the higher the surge pile the larger the hidden void can be. Report unsafe and hazardous working conditions and share safe working ideas with your supervisor and co-workers to help eliminate surge pile fatalities. Additional surge pile safety information is available on Images web page.