Assessing Worker Safety on Longwall Operations During Coal Mine Fires

Details

• Personal Author:
  Goodman, Gerrit V. R. ; Kissell, Fred N.
• Description:
  The Bureau of Mines has been actively involved in a study of worker safety on longwall operations during an underground mine fire. The results of this investigation were twofold. First, those factors affecting worker survival during a mine fire were defined and second, any relationships between these factors were identified. Although the individual factors affecting worker safety had been studied before, little information was available on their interdependence. Fault tree analysis was used to evaluate the miner escape scenario. A fault tree was constructed to analyze the occurrence of fatalities during an escape from an underground mine fire. The completed fault tree contained 24 initiating events. After constructing the fault tree, both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the tree were conducted. These evaluations revealed that reduced evacuation delays were most important in successfully evacuating from an underground mine fire. These analyses further showed that improved escapeway knowledge combined with improved self-rescuer training was also important. A brief evaluation was conducted to assess the importance of human versus engineered factors in the miner escape process. Several recommendations were given regarding human reliability under mine fire conditions. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Emergencies Emergency Responders Firefighters Fires Mining Occupational Health Safety Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Disaster-prevention Emergency-responders Emergency-response Escape-systems Fire-fighting Fire-hazards Fire-safety Mine-workers Miners Mining-industry Safety-research Training Underground-miners Underground-mining

  More +
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; Pennsylvania ; Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRC - Pittsburgh Research Center
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  91-97
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20030468
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the 21st Annual Institute on Coal Mining Health, Safety and Research, Blacksburg, Virginia, August 28-30, 1990. Hugler E, Bacho A, Karmis M, eds., Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990 Aug; :91-97
• Editor(s):
  Hugler E; Bacho A; Karmis M
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1990
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Proceedings of the 21st Annual Institute on Coal Mining Health, Safety and Research, Blacksburg, Virginia, August 28-30, 1990
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3f4d87b3f2d04ffe7b514e273a3e9e19750d0cf5d1f642f1c3cbe327d4d3ee9e51dbbb0881a5a1cf934e6cf3358353eb55899cdc5c545214751e6e1b4e9b8af3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/226586/cdc_226586_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.04 MB ]