1/22/2003

Three Dead, Three Injured in Marshall Co. Blast

Staff
Cameron

Three workers are dead after an early morning explosion on a mining construction site in Marshall County. The blast happened Wednesday morning just after one-o'clock. Six workers were at the bottom of the shaft when the explosion occurred. The three survivors are hospitalized. The names of the victims have not been released.

Two of the survivors are being treated at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, a third at Reynolds Hospital in Glen Dale. There is a 53 year old man from Waynesburg, Pennsylvania hospitalized in Pittsburgh, he is in critical condition. A 23 year-old man from Pentress, West Virginia is also in critical condition.

The victims are employed by Central Cambria Drilling Company. The company is a contractor of Consol Energy and was building the vent shaft that will eventually deliver air to the company's McElroy mine.

Consol Spokesman Tom Hoffman says the incomplete shaft is about 24-feet in diameter and a thousand feet deep. It's about six feet from the coal seam and several thousand feet from the mining shaft it will eventually serve.

Hoffman stresses the accident was not connected to the mine.

An investigation is underway as to what may have caused the explosion. Hoffman says there could be a variety of things the workers were doing. An investigation by the companies as well as state and federal investigators is getting underway today.

The director of the state office of Mine, Safety, Health and Training, Doug Conaway, has been on the scene since early Wednesday morning.