Ranking Factors Impacting Survival During Coal Mine Fires

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kissell, F. N. ; Timko, R. J. ; Litton, C. D.
• Description:
  This study ranks the factors impacting survival during a coal mine fire. It bas already been established that reducing time delays is the most important factor in saving lives. Consequently every event during afire is measured in terms d its duration, and the effectiveness d any action taken to improve survival is measured in terms d the time it saves. By ranking actions according to time saved these authors found that a comhination d actions was most effective. This combination was: • installing lifelines. • moderately decreasing air leakage and • decreasing the fire growth rate. Changing ventilation leakage alone was much less effective, as was altering the CO (carbon monoxide), sensor alarm threshold. These results confirm an earlier fault-tree study on escape from mine fires. The fault-tree study bad shown that, with the exception d delays, single factor changes have minimal impact. Significant reductions in fire fatalities only take place with multiple factor changes.
• Subjects:
  Coal Mining Fires
• Source:
  Min Eng 1993 Aug; 45(8):1077-1083
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:1b3cfc67ec00703e8f121cb73c55bac43c7dff0ce30941c03a3a44f79bea01a9
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/9206/cdc_9206_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 674.94 KB ]