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They found nine workers, seven of whom were dead. Others were hurt or missing about a mile and a half inside the mine, though there was some confusion over how many. Others made it out, Manchin said. In a statement early Tuesday, Massey Chairman and CEO Don Blankenship offered his condolences to the families of the dead miners. "Tonight we mourn the deaths of our members at Massey Energy," Blankenship said. Massey Energy, a publicly traded company based in Richmond, Va., has 2.2 billion tons of coal reserves in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia and Tennessee. It ranks among the nation's top five coal producers and is among the industry's most profitable. It has a spotty safety record. In the past year, federal inspectors fined the company more than $382,000 for repeated serious violations involving its ventilation plan and equipment at Upper Big Branch. The violations also cover failing to follow the plan, allowing combustible coal dust to pile up, and having improper firefighting equipment. Methane is one of the great dangers of coal mining, and federal records say the Eagle coal seam releases up to 2 million cubic feet of methane gas into the Upper Big Branch mine every 24 hours, which is a large amount, said Dennis O'Dell, health and safety director for the United Mine Workers labor union. In mines, giant fans are used to keep the colorless, odorless gas concentrations below certain levels. If concentrations are allowed to build up, the gas can explode with a spark roughly similar to the static charge created by walking across a carpet in winter, as at the Sago mine, also in West Virginia. Since then, federal and state regulators have required mine operators to store extra oxygen supplies. Upper Big Branch uses containers that can generate about an hour of breathable air, and all miners carry a container on their belts besides the stockpiles inside the mine. Upper Big Branch has had three other fatalities in the last dozen years. At New Life Assembly down the road from the disaster in Pettus, the 51-year-old pastor and miner Williams held a vigil with some of his faithful and had food for families and friends of the dead and missing, though few came. Most families were sequestered in a building at the mine, the entrance guarded by bright lights, state troopers and hordes of ambulances. Williams, who works at another Massey mine, said he knows the men at Upper Big Branch were professional and well-trained. "People tend to think Massey does a lot of wrong, but I've been there for 18 years and they've never asked me to do anything unsafe," he said. Upper Big Branch has 19 openings and roughly 7-foot ceilings. Inside, it's crisscrossed with railroad tracks used for hauling people and equipment. It is located in a mine-laced swath of Raleigh and Boone counties that is the heart of West Virginia's coal country. The seam produced 1.2 million tons of coal in 2009, according to the mine safety agency, and has about 200 employees. "The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration will investigate this tragedy, and take action," U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement. "Miners should never have to sacrifice their lives for their livelihood."
[Associated
Press;
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