Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) - Report of ...

GENERAL INFORMATION
The Crandall Canyon Mine, located near Huntington in Emery County, Utah, was opened into
the Hiawatha bituminous coal seam through five drift openings. At the time of the accident, the
mine operated with one working section (South Barrier section) and one spare section (3 rd North
section). The miners, including 63 underground and 4 surface employees, were not represented
by a labor organization. Coal was loaded from a continuous mining machine onto shuttle cars
and transported to the section loading point, where it was dumped onto a belt and conveyed to
the surface. Personnel and materials were transported via diesel-powered, rubber-tired, mobile
equipment. An atmospheric monitoring system (AMS) was used for fire detection and
monitoring other mine systems, including: electrical power, conveyor belt status, tonnage mined,
air quality, and fan operation. An AMS operator was stationed on the surface to monitor and
respond to AMS signals and alarms. Two-way voice communication was provided by pager
phones installed throughout the underground mine and hardwired to various locations on the
surface. A Personal Emergency Device (PED) system was used at the mine to send one-way text
messages from the surface to selected miners who wore PED receiver units integrated with their
cap lamp battery. To comply with the post-accident tracking requirements of the MINER Act,
GRI established five zones from the portal to the South Barrier section for tracking the location
of underground personnel (see Appendix C). As miners passed from one zone to another, they
reported their location over the pager phone system to the AMS operator who tracked their
movements.
Coal was mined seven days per week during two 12-hour shifts. Day shift production crews
worked from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and night shift production crews worked from 6:00 p.m. to
6:00 a.m. Maintenance personnel worked 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during day shift and 5:00 p.m.
to 5:00 a.m. during night shift. One set of day and night shift crews worked Monday through
Thursday and another set worked Friday through Monday. Everyone worked on Monday, which
was referred to as a “double-up day.” Preshift examinations were conducted on established
8-hour intervals beginning at 3:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 7:00 p.m.
The coal resources within the Crandall Canyon Mine mining permit boundary are owned by
either the Federal Government or the State of Utah and are leased for mining to GRI. The U.S.
Department of the Interior through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the Federal
coal and the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration manages the State coal.
Mining plans for the Federal leases must be approved by BLM and must comply with a Resource
Recovery Protection Plan (R2P2) to ensure diligent extraction of all minable coal. The R2P2 is
approved by BLM, within the mining capabilities of the operator, to achieve maximum economic
recovery of the Federal coal. BLM inspectors monitor compliance with the approved R2P2
through underground inspections. Since the mine is entirely within the Manti-LaSal National
Forest, the R2P2 also addresses the impacts of mining on surface lands and water resources that
are managed by the United States Forest Service.
The reserve was first opened between 1939 and 1955, when a small area at the portal was mined
and then abandoned. Genwal Coal Company Inc rehabilitated the old mine workings and
resumed production in 1983 (see Appendix D). Room and pillar mining was utilized and
included pillar recovery (often referred to as retreat mining) from panels.
The mine was acquired by Nevada Power in 1989. In 1990, 50% interest was purchased by the
Intermountain Power Agency (IPA), a political subdivision of the State of Utah. In 1995,
Andalex Resources Inc (ARI), a Delaware corporation operating in Utah, acquired Nevada
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