Coal miner dies at Alabama mine with dozens of recent safety citations

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

By Lee Hedgepeth and James Bruggers, Inside Climate News

OAK GROVE, Ala.—A coal miner named Jose Antonio M. Lara died early Wednesday morning following a rock collapse inside the Oak Grove mine, a facility in Jefferson County, just southwest of Birmingham. 

Lara’s injuries occurred at about 12:08 a.m., according to the Jefferson County Coroner’s office. He was pronounced dead at Oak Grove mine at 12:57 a.m.

Lara “was an Oak Grove mine employee working in an underground mine when he sustained blunt force injuries during a reported rock collapse,” the office’s initial report of Lara’s death stated. 

A representative of the United Mine Workers of America confirmed Lara’s death Wednesday morning. Lara, 52, was a husband and father of three children.

The death comes after a stream of alleged safety violations by Crimson Oak Grove Resources, which runs the longwall mining operation, including a citation related to the control of roof and rock collapses. The mining fatality also follows the filing of a federal lawsuit accusing the company of causing the death of an Alabama grandfather in a home explosion atop the mine earlier this year. 

Representatives of Oak Grove mine did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Lara was a “dedicated member” of UMWA Local Union 2133, according to the organization’s statement.

“The thoughts and prayers of every UMWA member are with the family of Jose Lara, who tragically lost his life in an incident last night at the Oak Grove Resources Mine in Bessemer, Alabama,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said.

Lara joined UMWA in 2016 and worked at the nearby Warrior metallurgical coal mine, where he participated in a two-year strike. He began mining at Oak Grove in 2021, according to a union spokesperson.

Lara was “a good person with a quiet personality” and was well-liked among his colleagues, a source told Inside Climate News. 

UMWA safety experts are on-site to determine the cause of Lara’s death, the union said, and operations at the mine have halted while the investigation continues. 

“This marks the ninth coal mine fatality of 2024, and the first in Alabama,” UMWA’s statement said. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of Brother Lara, and we are committed to uncovering the details of his death to help prevent future tragedies.”

Records from the Mine Safety and Health Administration show that the Oak Grove mine was repeatedly cited for safety violations in the days leading up to Lara’s death. In the 30 days prior to the rock collapse, Crimson Oak Grove was cited 89 times for violations of federal mine safety regulations. Of those, 34 were considered “significant and substantial,” meaning that inspectors concluded the violations were “reasonably likely to result in a serious injury or illness,” according to regulators.

In the week leading up to the death, MSHA’s database of alleged mine violations reported issues inside Oak Grove mine related to faulty equipment and potentially explosive coal dust. 

One citation involved a regulation that requires proper support for the roof and other parts of the mine. It’s not clear where in the mine that alleged violation occurred, but the regulation cited requires proper support inside the mine in “areas where persons work or travel” to protect them from “hazards related to falls of the roof, face or ribs and coal or rock bursts.”

Jack Spadaro, a former top federal mine safety engineer who works as a consultant for coalfield residents, workers and their lawyers, previously told Inside Climate News that Oak Grove’s history of violations documented a series of serious safety issues. 

“It sounds like a very unsafe mine, if they have penalties that high,” Spadaro said.

Federal regulators, he argued, haven’t done enough to regulate mines like Oak Grove for decades. When they do, the penalties aren’t enough to change bad behavior, which eventually becomes the norm, he said.  

In the three months following the fatal home explosion in March, MSHA inspectors cited Oak Grove mine 204 times for safety violations. A lawsuit by the family of W.M. Griffice, the grandfather who died from injuries sustained in the explosion, has alleged that methane gas escaping from Oak Grove mine caused the tragedy.

“If a mine, in a period of a few months, is getting more than 200 citations and 68 are significant and substantial under the regulations, the failure by the federal government and the state—as well as by the United Mine Workers—is disgraceful,” Spadaro said. 

Since that interview, the mine’s alleged safety violations have continued. In the nearly seven months following the March explosion, MSHA has cited more than 550 safety violations inside the mine, more than 190 of which were noted as “significant and substantial.”

Meanwhile, Kristie Baggett, an Oak Grove mine representative, has downplayed the violations cited by the federal regulator. 

“Every mine gets cited daily for random things,” she told residents in April with an Inside Climate News reporter present. “The other day they got cited because they weren’t wearing the right eye gear.”

The mine’s history of safety violations is “no more or no less” than that of many other mines, said Erin Bates, a spokeswomen for the United Mine Workers, on Wednesday. 

“These are dangerous jobs,” she added.

She confirmed the incident involved “a roof fall,” but said she was unaware which part of the mine it occurred in. She said a review of the recent inspections by MSHA and safety violations cited by the federal agency would be one of the factors in the investigation, which includes participation by union mine safety experts.

An MSHA record of Lara’s death classifies the accident as a “fall of roof or back.”

Kathy Love, director of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission, referred questions about the Oak Grove death to MSHA. 

“ASMC has no involvement in deaths or injuries,” Love wrote in an email. 

Jonathan McNair, a public relations specialist for the Alabama Department of Labor, said the state agency, which regulates some aspects of mining in the state, is working with MSHA to investigate the incident. ADOL and MSHA mine safety inspectors are on site, McNair said: “No other information is available at this time.”

MSHA, the federal underground mining regulator, typically issues preliminary accident reports in the days following a death inside an underground mine. A preliminary report has not yet been issued in this case. 

In a statement, a U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson confirmed MSHA’s involvement. 

“MSHA inspectors are conducting a full investigation of the accident,” the statement said.

Union officials have said that operations are currently shut down while an investigation into Lara’s death continues, but production at the facility is unlikely to remain halted for long. 

So far, neither federal or state regulators have been willing to stop operations at Oak Grove mine over its safety record or related concerns from those living above the mine. 

For months, residents have shared their fears about living atop the expanding mine operation, which has caused buildings’ foundations to crack, closed businesses and left homeowners afraid of methane explosions. 

Longwall mining involves a process where bladed machines shear off large slices of coal along a vast underground expanse, allowing the ceiling to cave in behind it. Mined areas can be as wide as 1,000 feet and more than a mile long. As coal is sheared, explosive methane gas is released from the mine that can potentially reach the surface, including structures atop the mine.

Residents’ fears were met with more uncertainty in recent weeks, with a reported change in leadership at Oak Grove. Ryan M. Murray, the son of a late coal magnate and a Donald Trump ally, is now operating the mine, he has confirmed. 

Meanwhile, mining company officials under both Murray and the previous operators have appeared unwilling to engage with the public, even skipping a recent community meeting organized by residents to address their concerns.

“We can’t make the mining company come and have these meetings,” a staffer with the state’s mining regulator said at the meeting. 

Residents fumed, upset that their concerns were being met with little but pleasantries. 

Lisa Lindsay spoke at that community meeting. She was the closest neighbor to Griffice, the man killed in the March home explosion, aside from his brother, who lived next door. She felt her house shake when the Griffice home exploded. 

On Wednesday, she said she was saddened to hear of “another life lost to the Oak Grove mine.”

Lindsay said she prays that investigators perform an “in depth and objective investigation,” but given what happened in the wake of the explosion that took her neighbor’s life, she’s not confident. 

“This is not the first death associated with this mine. It won’t be the last, if the so-called regulatory agencies continue to ignore the dangerous way this particular mine operates,” Lindsay told Inside Climate News. “My prayers for some measure of comfort and justice continue for this man’s family as well as W.M. Griffice’s family.

This mine must be stopped.”