“We think we're ready to rock and roll with the systems we've built,” said Joe Main, the assistant labor secretary in charge of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The MSHA, the Department of Environmental Protection, Consol Energy and the Homer City-based Special Medical Response Team ran a simulated emergency at Consol's Harvey Mine in West Finley to test the system.
Using radio repeaters, fiber-optic cables and computer imaging, the system will allow for quicker decisions in mine rescues, Main said.
MSHA has been working on the system since 2010, Main said.
The project identified problems rescuers encountered in mine disasters such as the 2001 cave-in and subsequent explosion at the Jim Walters Resources mine in Alabama that killed 13 miners, the 2006 Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia that killed 12 miners and the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners.
A key problem is that the mine roofs block radio signals, limiting walkie-talkies to about 500 feet. To get around the limitation, mine rescue teams would station someone with a walkie-talkie every 500 feet on their way into the mine to relay messages to the command center.
“We're going from the pony express era” to the 21st century, Main said.
The system uses radio repeaters, equipment that helps to transmit radio signals over longer distances, so that the mine rescue team talks directly to the command center, said John Urosek, MSHA's chief of mine emergency operations.
Other features include atmospheric monitoring devices the team will drop along the way. The devices will remotely send information to the command center, allowing it to detect changes that indicate fires, methane buildups and other hazards that threaten both the rescuers and survivors.
“It's all portable,” he said. “That's the beauty of it. It's all battery-operated.”
The batteries last for 96 hours, he said.
The equipment tested Wednesday is based in Pittsburgh. By the end of the year, MSHA plans to have similar setups in Beckley, W.Va., Madisonville, Ky., and Price, Utah. It also plans to put a setup in Denver.
Joe Sbaffoni, director of the state Bureau of Mine Safety, said the state has a mobile command center comparable to the ones MSHA is developing.
The state vehicle is able to hook right into the federal rescue system, he said.
“When we come in, we're going to see the same thing that MSHA sees,” he said.
Main said the next steps include working with other state agencies and coal mine operators to train rescue teams in the new technology.
“This is the new foundation we're going to be building off of,” he said.
©2015 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
