No. 9 families sue over disabled alarms

78 coal miners died in 1968 when Farmington No. 9 mine blew up, the worst mine death toll in the past 48 years. It accounted for 25 percent of the 311 coal miners who died in 1968.

48 years later, the families of the victims are suing Consolidation Coal Company, claiming that employees disabled alarms that would have warned the miners to get out before the explosion.

Consol paid $10,000 per body to the families. But seven widows sued and settled 14 years later for 246 woody, hilly acres of land above No. 9.

Two years after the tragedy, federal mine inspector Larry Layne notified his superiors that an unidentified Consolidation electrician told him that an alarm that was supposed to be connected to a fan pushing dangerous methane gas out of the mine had been disabled.

If the fan stopped, the alarm would shut off power to the mine within minutes, alerting miners to evacuate.

The dead miners’ families didn’t know about that fan being disabled till it was revealed in West Virginia University journalism professor Bonnie Stewart’s 2011 book about the disaster. The families were appalled.

21 of the miners who were working at the time escaped.

This was a mine where 16 died in a 1954 explosion.

When No. 9 exploded, Consolidation was owned by Continental Oil, which changed its name to Consol Energy, and sold five mines and No. 9 liabilities to Murray Energy in 2013.

Murray Energy has been cited for thousands of violations by federal inspectors over the years.

To read the article about the lawsuit, click on http://www.timeswv.com/news/lawsuit-seeks-to-fix-blame-for-no-mine-disaster/article_5f9f3232-7279-11e6-b0f5-7708558dcacb.html