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Optimism returns to Grande Cache as coal mine plans to reopen

Source: CBC News

There is renewed optimism in the small resource community of Grande Cache after a foreign company agreed to buy the steel making coal mine that has been shuttered for two years and helped drain the town’s population.

Hundreds of jobs were wiped out in the community northwest of Edmonton after metallurgical coal prices tanked, forcing the local operator to shut the surface and underground mines in 2015.

Facing almost $500 million in debt, Grande Cache Coal was forced into receivership a year ago.

Since then, steelmaking coal prices have bounced back, and the court-appointed receiver has found a buyer.

Sonicfield Global, one of the mine’s lenders, plans to restart mining operations “as soon as possible” after the purchase closes at the end of May, according to court records.

“We have a number of people that have properties and family in Grande Cache that are working elsewhere; they can’t wait to get home,” said Gary Taje, a representative of United Mine Workers of America, which represented coal miners in Grande Cache.

“There’s some excitement in town. The town suffered through a bit of a recession, if not a depression for the last couple of years, and this will get the town back on its feet and restore property values.”

Metallurgical coal from Grande Cache’s mines have historically been shipped to customers mostly in Asia, with some coal heading to Brazil, Europe and Canada.

The coal produced at Grande Cache is used to make steel, as opposed to thermal coal which produces electricity and is being phased out as part of Alberta’s climate change agenda.

At its peak, the mine employed 640 people, but layoffs began in early 2015 after surface mining was suspended due to slumping coal prices. After prices sunk further, the underground mine was shuttered later that year.

By the time that Grande Cache Coal’s Chinese lenders forced it into receivership over nearly $500 million in debts, just 18 workers remained.

Mayor Herb Castle said the town’s population has drained in the past two years.

“We’ve had people walk away from homes, have had cars and trailers and things like that repossessed from people who no longer had employment,” Castle said.

“This is a welcome pick-me-upper or a welcome injection in the economy in our community, because it has the potential of bringing back 500 employees to our community.”

Coun. Yvonne Rempel said the town has survived resource swings in the past, and this time was able to rely on the forestry industry and Grande Cache Institution, a medium security prison, as top employers.

“Grande Cache over the years has weathered the storm this time much better than ever before,” Rempel said.

“We have a community that’s very resilient. We have businesses that have stuck through the hard times and are still in operation. Are things tight for them? Absolutely. But this is a great community.”

Taje said the company plans an initial startup of the surface mine which he believes will lead to 200 new jobs.

The town has been through bouts of disappointment in the past when promises the mine would reopen were never fulfilled. But Taje said this time is different, with a well-financed company now seeking court approval to buy the mine and an outlook of higher coal prices.

“This deal will happen.”

A court is expected to hear the sale application Jan. 8.

Ahead of the expected closing of the deal on May 30, Grande Cache Coal is seeking expressions of interest in over a dozen senior roles at the mine, including foremen and superintendents.

Written by: Reid Southwick

Looming pension shortfalls to complicate next shutdown fight

Source: Politico.com

The next potential sleeper cause of a government shutdown? Pensions.

Congress barely averted a shutdown last year amid a fight over miners’ health care. Now the looming collapse of pension plans for the miners — as well as thousands of Teamster truck drivers and food service workers — is fueling another, even more expensive, round of brinkmanship.

Key Democrats are vowing to fight for a fix as part of any forthcoming deal to fund the government. And they warn that if Congress doesn’t step in soon to forestall the insolvency of several key pension plans — including the massive Central States plan, which covers an estimated 400,000 union workers and retirees — taxpayers risk ending up on the hook for an even bigger multibillion-dollar rescue for the government’s pension guarantee agency.

But it’s far from clear the workers will get their rescue. Conservative Republicans will be loath to provide anything that looks like a bailout, particularly for union workers. And one of the Senate’s leading Democratic advocates for relief, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, is one of the GOP’s top targets ahead of his reelection campaign next year.

Brown said in a Monday interview that he sees the pensions fix as a “moral appeal” for action, along the lines of the Democrats’ push to help the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

“There are tens of thousands of Teamsters and mine workers and bakery and confectionery workers and carpenters that will see huge cuts in their pensions, and they start pretty soon” if a long-term solution isn’t reached, Brown said. “It’s not just fixing it and getting it done because the economics and the math get worse and worse. It’s because of what it does to families.”

Last year at this time, Brown joined West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and other Democrats in a standoff over adding long-term health care and pension help for retired miners to must-pass government funding legislation. Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ultimately included a rescue for retired miners’ health care in a $1 trillion spending deal earlier this year, but addressing their pensions wasn’t part of that package.

This winter, it’s more than retired miners who are facing potentially steep pension cuts if their plans aren’t shored up by early next year. The Teamsters are dispatching retirees to the Hill this week to lean on Congress to back a pensions rescue plan.

“We’re still going to do everything we can,” Manchin said in a Monday interview. “I’m pushing as hard as I can.”

Manchin underscored, however, that “it has to be a bipartisan fix.” His proposal to keep miners’ pensions afloat is backed by West Virginia’s GOP senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and GOP Rep. David McKinley, but Brown’s bill that would rescue other so-called multi-employer pension plans has yet to attract a Republican backer.

“We’re working with a lot of Republicans — some that are listening,” said Mike Walden, a retired Teamster who serves as president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions. “So we’re trying to get them on board to at least get this passed or attached to the spending bill.”

Senators in both parties have been in talks for weeks about a way forward on the pension funding, one source in the upper chamber said. But the prospects for a deal by year’s end are highly uncertain, even though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) listed “Americans’ endangered pensions” alongside aid to Dreamers as one of their key priorities in a year-end spending deal after a meeting last week at the White House.

And while Brown said he wants a fix included in a funding bill, he did not threaten to withhold his vote if the at-risk pensions aren’t addressed. Lawmakers likely have until the spring to act before certain beneficiaries begin to face lost benefits. “The Republicans are always the ones to shut the government down,” he said. “They’re always the ones threatening.”

Another obstacle, beyond the number of other high-profile priorities on Congress’ year-end to-do list, is the price tag of a broader pensions fix.

Brown’s proposal would empower the Treasury Department to make loans to the at-risk pension plans, which would use the money on safe investments to backstop the retirement plans that are currently at the greatest risk. Beyond those loans, the at-risk plans are expected to require as much as $25 billion in long-term assistance from the government-backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in order to avert insolvency.

But the PBGC is already projected to reach insolvency by 2025, and staving off that worst-case outcome would cost $101 billion over 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

By 

Miner pensions in jeopardy unless lawmakers act

Source: WTOV9

Pensions for almost 100,000 coal miners and their families are in jeopardy.

Now, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin is teaming up with many Ohio Valley miners. They’re asking for other lawmakers and the public to back them.

The biggest thing Manchin wanted to stress–this is not a government bailout. He says if the bill isn’t passed it could actually cost taxpayers more in the long-run with other government assistance.

Denny Pickens is a United Mine Worker retiree. He’s teamed up with Manchin and other state representatives to push a pension bill.

“I have widows call me,” Pickens said. “I am a past president of my local and without these pensions, I don’t know what they’ll do and it’s a sad phone call when you have to tell someone we don’t know where this is going.”

Pickens says the bill would save the funds for almost 100,000 miners and their families. Manchin and other miners have been meeting in Washington, D.C. with lawmakers concerning the pension issue.

“These are not elaborate pensions and most of them average around $500 and there are a lot of widows that if they lose that in the next year o r two, they lost everything,” Manchin said.

Manchin says the bill should have passed last month, but he says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fought the act. Without a compromise, leaders say the fight could actually shut down the government.

Manchin and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have pledged to block a federal funding bill unless Republicans act. Other lawmakers from the Ohio Valley are also supporting the pension bill.

“People want to think this is a government bailout, but we are not asking for a taxpayer bailout,” Manchin said. “We are not asking for anything but what our miners have earned. They worked for it and negotiated for it.”

The benefits will expire at the end of the year unless the senate steps in. Manchin urges people to contact lawmakers.

by Crissy Clutter

Service remembers 37 miners killed in Robena Mine explosion

Source: Observer-Reporter

Ray Benninghoff was at work at Fischer Body in West Mifflin 55 years ago when he was pulled aside and told his father was one of the miners missing following an explosion at the U.S. Steel Co.’s Robena No. 3 Mine.

Benninghoff left work that day, Dec. 6, 1962, and went to his parent’s home in McClellandtown to comfort his mother.

“It was sad,” said Benninghoff, who was 32 years old then and is 87 now.

“I remember everything about it,” he said. “There was a lot of snow, the weather was really bad.”

Bennington said he doesn’t remember his family having much hope right from the start.

“There were two explosions,” he explained.

The loss of his father, Norman, who was 57 years old, was very hard on his mother, Anna.

“My mother sat in her rocking chair for a year, waiting for my dad to come home,” he said. “My wife, Mary, took care of her.”

Benninghoff was among the many who gathered Wednesday morning at a service held by United Mine Workers District 2 and Local 1980 to honor the 37 miners who died in the Robena explosion. Norman Benninghoff was a good man and a hard worker, his son said. He was a mechanic and had worked at Robena many years. He was also a good friend.

“I lost my best fishing buddies,” Benninghoff said, referring to his father and two others miners who were friends and who also died in the explosion.

The explosion at Robena occurred at 1:03 p.m. and took the lives of members of two continuous mining crews working about two miles from the base of the mine’s Frosty Run Shaft.

According to news accounts, the force of the explosion was so strong it knocked down men working underground more than two miles away. One hundred and seventy miners were in the mine at the time and 133 escaped unassisted.

The explosion is believed to have been caused by a buildup of methane gas, resulting from a temporary shutdown of ventilation fans. The gas was ignited by a spark from mine equipment.

Each year, the UMW holds the memorial service to honor the fallen miners at a granite monument on Route 21 in Monongahela Township, just west of the shuttered Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant, and to recognize the importance of the men’s sacrifice in the fight for stronger mine safety laws.

“The spirit of the 37 miners who lost their lives in the Robena No. 3 Mine disaster, hardened the resolve of the United Mine Workers of America,” said Levi Allen, UMW international secretary-treasurer, who was the keynote speaker.

Following the disaster, the union made a commitment to strengthen safety laws, a fight that took seven years and was opposed by coal operators, he said. Finally, on Dec. 30, 1969, Congress passed the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act.

“Robena miners were the catalysts in getting that legislation done,” Allen said. “Their sacrifice has paved the way for every single coal miner who is here today to go home at night after a hard day’s work.”

Allen said the union has a duty to these men to continue the fight to preserve safety in the mines.

“It can’t be a passive duty. It requires action, it requires faith, it requires fighting to preserve the rights these men fought for with their blood and with their lives,” he said.

Benninghoff said he has attended the service a number of times over the years and noted that for some years, the weather has been pretty bad. But, he said, he’s glad the service is always held.

During the ceremony, the names of the 37 men who died in the disaster as well as the names of two men who died in another explosion at Robena on Oct. 2, 1962 were read by Marlon Whoolery, Local 1980 president. Ed Yankovich, international vice president for District 2, served as master of ceremonies.

Written by: Bob Niedbala

Robena remembered: 55 years later

Source: Herald Standard 

Fifty-five years later, Marcella Sarson’s voice still wavers when she considers the lives she saw torn apart at Robena Mine.

“It still is a very brutal thing to face,” Sarson says.

First for Sarson and her parents came the drive through bitter cold from Bobtown to a Robena lamp house while rescue crews dug for trapped miners, including her 18-year-old brother, Albert Bronakoski.

Then came several days of waiting there — and not going home.

“They didn’t give us much information,” Sarson recalls.

The first body was sighted at 4 a.m. on Dec. 8, some 39 hours after the methane gas explosion approximately two miles from the Frosty Run Shaft.

“They kept digging,” Sarson, 75, remembers.

The large room in the mine building at Frosty Run Shaft housed relatives waiting for some word of their loved ones until the announcement on the morning of Dec. 10 that all 37 men trapped in the mine had been found dead.

Bronakoski was the youngest miner who died in the explosion, a Penn State student studying to be a mining engineer — mining despite his father Adam, a superintendent of the Shannopin mine in Bobtown, forbidding it.

One of the oldest miners to die in the Greene County mine disaster was Alex Marra, a 62-year-old first-generation Italian immigrant who planned to retire the following spring.

“It never worked out,” remembers his son Alex Marra, now 81 himself.

Marra still has a framed copy of the Dec. 7, 1962, Uniontown Morning Herald showing a photo of his older brother Joe, his twin brother Anthony and himself waiting at the disaster scene.

“It’s just as clear today as it was then,” Marra says.

Marra will try to make it to a memorial service Wednesday that will be held by United Mine Workers of America Local 1980 and UMWA International District 2 to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Robena Mine disaster at the Robena Monument off of Route 21, just west of the former Hatfield Power Plant. It’s an annual memorial service that Marra appreciates.

“It never lets you forget,” Marra says. “That’s what I like about it.”

Paul Zvolenski Jr., 74, of Palmer will be taking his youngest daughter to the memorial service since she’s never been to one of them. His father, Paul Zvolenski, Sr., was 40 when he perished in the mine, leaving behind a wife and seven children.

“It was a rough Christmas that year,” Zvolenski remembers.

A HISTORY OF DANGER

Zvolenski also recalls his father, a World War II U.S. Army veteran, saying that something bad would happen at the Robena Mine one day.

“He always said that place wasn’t safe,” Zvolenski says.

UMWA International District 2 Vice President Ed Yankovich said that greater mine safety is a legacy of the Robena Mine explosion, which an investigation released in March 1963 by then-Gov. William Scranton found was caused by accumulation of methane gas and coal dust.

“There’s no safety there,” John Zvolenski, brother of Paul Sr. and a 21-year veteran with U.S. Steel, said of the mine in a Jan. 1963 Uniontown Evening Standard story.

“The guys know it’s not as safe as it should be,” George Seiman, a U.S. Steel mechanic, said of Robena in the same story.

An explosion at the Robena No. 2 Mine killed two men and severely injured two others two months prior to the Dec. 6 explosion, caused by friction from falling rocks igniting methane gas.

There were 99,690 recorded coal mining fatalities in America from 1900 through 1962, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, an average of more than 1,500 every year. Dec. 6, 1962, the date of the Robena Mine explosion, was itself a 55-year anniversary of the Monongah, W.V. mining disaster, which in 1907 claimed the lives of 362 men and boys and remains the worst mine disaster in U.S. history per the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

Yankovich pointed out that there was no MSHA in 1962, noting that tragedies like the Robena Mine explosion, along with the Farmington, W.V. mining disaster in 1968, helped result in the Federal Coal Mine and Health and Safety Act of 1969, which created a forerunner to MSHA, an organization within the U.S. Department of Labor that enforces compliance with safety standards for miners.

The Robena tragedy reinforced then what at the time was an unacceptable dichotomy of sending men into space while the “wholesale killing” of men in mines continued, Yankovich said.

“Those two don’t correlate,” Yankovich added, noting that miner safety conditions can always be improved.

On Dec. 6, 2011, 49 years after the Robena Mine explosion, MSHA concluded that flagrant safety violations contributed to a 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch-South Mine in West Virginia, killing 29 miners and injuring two others. MSHA issued Massey Energy Company 369 citations and orders as well as civil penalties totaling $10.8 million.

“People who leave their house in the morning or evening to go to work should have a very reasonable expectation they will return home.”

Trauma stemming from the Robena disaster touched those among the rescue crews.

Walter Kasievich, Jr. recalls that his father, Walter, Sr., was a mine safety committee member and was gone for several days, pulling miners out.

“He had what I think was a mental breakdown,” Kasievich says of his father, who was also coping with the loss of his own father around the same time as well.

The elder Kasievich had a “minor explosion inside” after the Robena explosion, not working for nearly a year until he “got into the swing of things again.”

Masontown Mayor Toni Petrus recalls waiting to hear from her father, Walter Scarton, who would call her River Avenue home before he’d go in on a rescue trip and after he’d come back.

“God, country and U.S. Steel,” she recalls her mother Ruby saying of her father’s priorities.

Petrus still has a red blanket that the Salvation Army gave to Scarton, who died in 2013, amid the rescue effort.

“They let him bring that home,” Petrus said.

“THE SACRIFICES THEY GAVE”

Yankovich hopes for a strong turnout at Wednesday’s memorial service. He’s been master of ceremonies at the annual service since 1989.

“It’s a promise that was kept to honor the guys that lost their lives, to never forget the sacrifices that they gave,” Yankovich said.

Adam Bronakoski died in 2002, four decades after his son Albert was trapped in the Robena Mine. Adam’s obituary emphasized that he “established mining and safety standards that were models in the coal mining industry”at Shannopin.

Adam knew of sacrifices made at the mines his entire life.

“His dad was brought from the mine in a bag and dropped on his family’s porch,” Sarson said.

Adam’s mother Anna was pregnant with him at the time and gave birth to him five months later, a fifth child left fatherless in the Bronakoski family by a Vesta 4 Mine accident.

“It was a very horrendous event,” Sarson remembers, 55 years later.

Court dismisses Consol appeal in retired miners’ benefits case

Source: Post Gazette 

United Mine Workers of America is claiming a small win after a West Virginia judge dismissed Consol Energy’s appeal in a retiree health benefit case.

The ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals leaves in place a temporary injunction requiring the energy company to keep providing benefits while a broader case is under appeal. That means some 3,400 retired miners, widows and dependents will continue to receive benefits for the time being.

Cecil-based Consol had sought to fund health savings accounts for five years rather than pay contractually negotiated lifetime benefits. Judge David A. Faber of the Federal Court for Southern West Virginia rejected that plan in March. Consol filed an appeal, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed on Tuesday.

“This is another step forward in the case but it is far from over,” said UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts. Consol has been “focused on grasping every dollar at the expense of thousands of senior citizens — the very people who created the wealth that allowed Consol to make billions of dollars for decades,” he said.

Plaintiffs in the case say Consol misled them into retiring earlier than they might have by promising lifetime benefits including $2,500 per year to cover deductibles and copayments. Instead, the company announced it would end those benefits in 2015. Plaintiffs argue that’s a violation of the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act of 1974.

A spokesman for Consol did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington Bureau Chief Tracie Mauriello: tmauriello@post-gazette.com; 703-996-9292 or on Twitter @pgPoliTweets.

EPA hears both sides of Clean Power Plan during Charleston hearing

Source: The Exponent Telegram

CHARLESTON — From a 23-year-old North Carolina Council of Churches staffer to the CEO of the nation’s largest privately held coal company, officials of the Environmental Protection Agency heard dozens if not hundreds of people speak in opposition to or in favor of the Clean Power Plan on Tuesday.

In hearings conducted simultaneously in three rooms of the state Capitol, EPA officials listened as people gave their opinions in comments limited to five minutes each.

“My generation and my family will be living and breathing the repercussions of today’s decision,” said Michelle Peedin, the Council of Churches staffer. “Let’s protect the people, not the polluters.”

Robert E. Murray, founder, president and CEO of Murray Energy, took the opposite approach to what he described as the “so-called and illegal Clean Power Plan, better known as the No Power Plan.”

Jim Probst, state coordinator for Citizens Climate Lobby, said he understands the need to protect jobs, but asked, “When do people’s lives and health fit into that equation?”

He urged the EPA not to just keep the Clean Power Plan, but also to “make it more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Liz Perera, a climatologist for the Sierra Club, said polls show a majority of Americans supporting the plan.

“Repealing the plan is ignoring the reality of the climate crisis,” she said.

Two officials with the United Mine Workers of America conducted a news conference by the coal miner statue on the Capitol grounds after offering their testimony.

“The Clean Power Plan has placed the burden of solving the problem of global climate change on the backs of American coal miners, their families and their communities, even though the plan as it stands has virtually no hope of having any impact on worldwide carbon emissions,” said Levi Allen, international secretary-treasurer for the UMWA.

“(UMWA President Cecil) Roberts, our membership and I will continue to fight for our members’ jobs and look forward to working on a new plan that property addresses the problem of global climate change in a way that does destroy our coalfield communities,” Allen said.

Gene Trisko, environmental counsel for the UMWA, said he expects the decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan to be made early next year and a new plan to be announced shortly thereafter.

The hearings at the Capitol this week are part of the first step of a two-step process, Trisko said.

“Step One is repealing the Clean Power Plan as we know it — basically eradicating it from the pages of the Federal Register,” Trisko said.

“And then, we understand, EPA intends to propose a replacement rule, and that will happen in the course of the next month or so, we anticipate,” he said. “That proposal will set forth a number of options for EPA’s future course of action in dealing with carbon dioxide emissions, including a scaled-back version of the Clean Power Plan that focuses on plant-by-plant assessments that focuses on what can be done to improve efficiencies and reduce carbon emissions at individual power plants.”

That, Trisko said, is what the section of law the EPA cited in writing the Clean Power Plan is all about.

“The UMWA has been active in this process in supporting repeal of the proposal, and we will be active in the second phase of developing the alternative rule to replace the Clean Power Plan,” Trisko said.

Several opponents of the Clean Power Plan thanked the EPA for finally having a public meeting in coal country to hear comments on a proposal that affects the coal industry and coal jobs.

“We thank you all for giving us new hope, and you see more smiles in this room than you have in the last eight years,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.

Cosmo Servidio, administrator for EPA Region 3, said being in a coal-producing state to hear comments is part of the administration’s commitment to federalism.

“As we delegate our authorities to (states), we are in partnership with them to make sure that first and foremost our laws are implemented to the rule of law. Regrettably, the past eight years, there was definitely overreach by the previous administration,” Servidio said.

“That’s why we’re here in West Virginia in coal country. It’s important that we hear from the region that is adversely affected by this plan, Servidio said.

Staff Writer Jim Ross can be reached at 304-395-3483 or email at jross@statejournal.com

UMWA’s Roberts urges members to call Congress about pension plan

Source: WV Metro News

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Members of the United Mine Workers Union plan to return to Capitol Hill next week to continue efforts to gain support for the American Miners Pension Act.

UMWA International President Cecil Roberts provided union members with an update on the pension issue in a robo call that went out Tuesday morning.

“Twenty-five UMWA retirees and spouses from Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia were on Capitol Hill last week spreading the word about the American Miners Pension Act,” Roberts said. “There will be more retirees in Washington next week and even more the week after.”

The UMWA pension was created in the 1940’s and backed by the federal government. The most recent update was the 1974 Miners Pension Plan. However, as the coal industry fell on hard times and bankruptcy filings began to mount, the pressure has left the pension fund in jeopardy. The union won a similar fight for lifetime health care benefits earlier this year.

In Tuesday’s call, Roberts urged union members to make their voices heard in Washington by calling congressional members and urge them to get on board.

“If you’re representative is on the (sponsor) list–call them and thank them. If not, call them and ask them to be a co-sponsor,” Roberts said. “We need to build as much support as possible to preserve your pensions.”

The American Miners Pension Act, as currently written, would address the faltering plan with the following provisions, according to the UMWA:

1. Include a provision from the original Miners Protection Act allowing transfers of excess funds in the Abandoned Mine Land program to the 1974 UMWA Pension Plan.

2. Direct the Treasury Department to loan the 1974 UMWA Plan funds annually to prevent insolvency.

3. Cap the annual loan amount at $600 million and set the interest rate at 1%.

4. Require the fund to pay interest only for the first ten years and then pay back the principal plus interest over
a 30-year term.

5. Require the fund to certify each year that the pension plan is solvent and able to pay back the remaining principal and interest.

6. Actuarial analyses indicate that the UMWA 1974 Plan would need to take loans for as little as four years.

“We’ve seen 51 or 52 bankruptcies throughout the coalfields of this country,” Roberts said at a news conference in Washington, D.C. last month. “The people who have suffered the most and lost the most along the way are the people who worked in the coal mines and retired from the coal mines.”

The pensions impact nearly 87,000 who currently receive them and another 25,000 who will be retiring in the coming years to begin collecting. Approximately 26,000 of those who rely on the pensions are in West Virginia. The average pension is around $586 a month.

Number 9 Mine Explosion Honored 49 Years Later

Source: WDTV.COM

FARMINGTON, W.Va. (WDTV) – In 1968, the local communities of Farmington and Mannington were rocked by the mine disaster at the Farmington number 9. An explosion and fire killed 78 miners, 17 of which remain entombed in the rubble of the mine.

The nation had its eyes on West Virginia and a year later, in 1969, Congress passed the nation’s first mine safety and health legislation. This legislation aimed to eliminate fatal accidents and reduce accidents and health hazards in general.

Today, the community and surrounding the area came together to Flat Run Memorial to pay respect and honor these victims from nearly 50 years ago. The UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer, Levi D Allen, and District 31 Vice President, Mike Caputo, were in attendance to commemorate the victims and mourn with the state.

Levi Allen said, “There are literally thousands of people in this area that are alive today because of the sacrifice they made.”

Mike Caputo told us, “These folks are heros to us and their widows particularly are heroes. They could have just sat home and mourned as they had every right in the world to do, but they said no, we are not going to let other families go through what we went through. By golly were going to go to Washington and were going to make a difference and they did.”

Although it’s been nearly 50 years since the incident, the community still gathers together to remember the losses we have suffered as West Virginians and even a nation.

“It’s meaningful to the families that we have not forgot the sacrifices they made and I was talking to some family members. We don’t care if there’s 3 foot of snow, we don’t care if the rain is pouring down, we don’t care if it’s 150 degrees heat, we’re going to be here every year to honor those men and their families because they have done so much to change the lives of coal miners. We absolutely owe them that and we’re going to keep that promise,” said Caputo.

These miners sacrifices will not be soon forgotten as decades later people continue to come together and honor these brave men.

By: Mehgan Haskiell

Victims of Farmington mine disaster remembered on 49th anniversary

Source: WV MetroNews

FARMINGTON, W.Va. — Hundreds gathered to honor the lives and sacrifices of the 78 miners who perished in the 1968 Farmington #9 disaster, despite Sunday’s snow and cold weather.

Monday marks 49 years since the mine’s explosion, and while that day was a tragic loss for the community and the families of those miners, it also resulted in some of the most sweeping and comprehensive mine safety legislation in the U.S., said Mike Caputo, vice president of the United Mine Workers of America International District 31.

“They forced our government to enact health and safety standards that coal miners could be assured and have expectation to go home to their families at the end of their shift, so we owe them a lot,” Caputo said. “They gave up their lives for us to have a safer coal mine to work in.”

In the 49 years prior to the 1968 disaster, 59,628 people died in the mines. In the 49 years since that day, that number is 3,624, UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Levi Allen said.

“Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not okay with 3,624,” Allen said. “Nobody here should be okay with 3,624, but a 15:1 reduction is a pretty good start.

“You know, it’s terrible, but we’re never going to know what caused that explosion. We’re never going to be able to unsee those terrible pictures that we saw,” he added. “All we know is that our recovered brothers and those still entombed hold up all of our futures with their sacrifice. These mens lives demanded the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.”

That significant drop in mine fatalities is why Caputo feels it’s so vital to continuing honor those men.

“If you don’t remember what happened, some folks will want to go back to those kinds of mining practices,” he said. “The operators of today have to be on notice that we’re not going backwards when it comes to coal mining health and safety, number one, but most importantly that these 78 men who perished on that fateful day, we need to remember those folks. They’re heroes.”

Missing from this year’s ceremony was Ralph Starkey, the last remaining survivor of the Farmington #9 explosion.

“He comes every year,” Caputo said. “God bless him, he couldn’t come this year because his health is very bad, but his wife came to place their wreath.”

Caputo vividly remembers November 20, 1968, at only 11 years old, because his father was also a coal miner.

“We all were very scared and knew that could happen to our loved ones as well,” he said. “My hats’ off to the widows and the families of these miners who said, ‘We’re not taking this crap anymore. We’re not going to make families go through what we went through. They’re heroes, just absolute heroes.”

Teresa Reid, now of Grafton, was 11 when her father, Hartsel Lee Miller, died in the explosion.

“I remember seeing the smoke when we watched it on TV, and mom said daddy wasn’t coming home. He was in there for awhile, but they finally got him out and we buried him,” Reid said. “It’s been different. We had no dad when we got married, no dad for grandkids, and no dad to sit on his lap. It’s not easy.”

Hearing remarks of how that day has helped to make mining safer for others, Reid said she is hopeful that fewer children have to suffer the same loss.

“I wouldn’t want them to go through what we went through,” she said. “I mean, we had a good life, but even today, it hurts.”

One year shy of 50 years since her father’s untimely death, Reid takes comfort in seeing the turnout of miners, families and friends who come to honor him and the other 77 each year.

“We come every year because we owe him that much,” she said.

While every ceremony has been touching, Caputo said next year will be extra special for the 50th.

“I have watched this grow over the years, and look at the elements we have today. I’ve seen inches of snow here, wind howling up and down this holler and people still come. It’s that important, and we’re going to really do something special for the 50th,” he said. “We’re in the planning stages of that right now. It’ll be half a century. Think about that.”

By Brittany Murray