At Least 7 Die in West Virginia Coal Mine Explosion

At least seven miners were killed and nearly 20 were unaccounted for after an explosion ripped through a coal mine on Monday in West Virginia, state emergency officials said.

The explosion occurred at about 3 p.m. at the Upper Big Branch mine, 30 miles south of Charleston, in Raleigh County.

The mine, which employs about 200, is owned by the Virginia-based Massey Energy Company and operated by Performance Coal Company.

“All we know now is, this is an awful disaster,” Representative Nick J. Rahall II said as he arrived at the mine site, which is in his district. “This is the second major disaster at a Massey site in recent years, and something needs to be done.“

In a statement, Massey said mine rescue teams and state and federal officials were responding to the explosion.

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said that the mine was nonunion but that the union had dispatched a team to advise on the rescue and to help the families of the trapped or dead miners.

Michael Mayhorn, emergency dispatcher for Boone County, said that that at least 20 ambulances and three helicopters had been dispatched from nearby counties, and that the state medical examiner was heading to the scene. At least one miner was evacuated by helicopter, he said.

Dennis O’Dell, an official with the union who was in contact with state and federal safety officials, said the current theory was that the explosion might have been caused by a buildup of methane gas in a sealed-off section of the mine. A similar type of explosion occurred in the 2006 Sago mining disaster, which left 12 miners dead after trapping them underground for nearly two days.

Federal records indicate that the Upper Big Branch mine has recorded an injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations for at least six of the past 10 years. The records also show hat the mine had 458 violations in 2009, with a total of $897,325 in safety fines penalties assessed against it last year. It has paid $168,393 in safety penalties.

A conveyor belt at the Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 at Melville in Logan County, W.Va., caught fire and two miners were killed in 2006.

Mr. O’Dell said some officials believed the ignition source for the explosion might have been a device that carries mine personnel to and from the work area. It may have been moving near the sealed section of the mine at the time of the blast, he said.

Ellen Smith, the editor of Mine Safety and Health News, said the mine was the site of two fatalities in the previous 10 years.

On July 19, 2003, an electrician, Rodney Alan Scurlock, 27, was fatally electrocuted while repairing a shuttle car trailing cable, she said.

On March 29, 2001, Ms. Smith said, Herbert J. Meadows, 48, a continuous mining machine operator, was struck by falling rock on a retreat pillar mining section. He died of his injuries two days later, she said.

Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, away on vacation in Florida, was preparing to return to the state, said his spokesman Matt Turner.

More than 100,000 coal miners have been killed in accidents in the United States since 1900, but the number of fatalities has fallen sharply in recent decades, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. As late as the 1940s, it was not unusual to have more than 1,000 mining deaths a year; in 2009 there were 35 mining deaths, according the agency.

But mining remains dangerous work, as the disasters that seem to befall small Appalachian towns every few years attest. And there are persistent alarms raised about mines using antiquated safety equipment, lax enforcement and a culture that discourages safety complaints.

In 2006, West Virginia was the site of another mining calamity when 12 miners at the Sago Mine were killed by an explosion in an abandoned section of the mine. State officials said they believed those miners could have survived the blast if the seals cordoning off the area where it occurred had been properly installed.

In 2001, an explosion at Blue Creek Mine No. 5 in Brookwood, Ala. claimed the lives of 13 workers. And in 1984, 27 workers were killed when a faulty air compressor ignited a fire at the Wilberg mine near Orangeville, Utah.

Federal regulations passed after the Sago disaster increased the monitoring of air quality in active and sealed sections of the mines to avoid methane build up. The new regulations also required mine operators to install stronger barriers between active and non-active sections of mines.

Mr. O’Dell said federal and state regulators would be immediately checking to see how well the mine complied with those and other new safety regulations