In the ten months since early September 2018, MSHA has documented nine equipment fires involving Hitachi excavators and shovels and Caterpillar haul trucks, front end loaders and dozers. On September 7, 2018, a miner received fatal burn injuries when a fire occurred on a haul truck and the manually-activated fire suppression system did not function when activated. The remaining eight equipment fires were all reported as non-injury.
Safe + Sound Week is a nationwide event being held August 12 – 18 that recognizes the successes of workplace health and safety programs. Successful safety and health programs can proactively identify and manage workplace hazards before they cause injury or illness, improving sustainability and the bottom line. Participating in Safe + Sound Week can help get your program started, energize an existing one, or provide a chance to recognize your safety successes. Click HERE for more. – OSHA
Each year I compile a pdf of all the fatalities into mnm and coal pdfs. (Starting with 2019 both will be in the same document since MSHA is combining them). I just completed the 2018 metal/nonmetal one. You can move from fatality to fatality with bookmarks that are built in or just search a word like “loader” and find all the references to that in all fatalities for the year. It is also posted in the Resources tab above where I’ll add some past years as I get time or requests.
This is a friendly reminder to report your hours for January – March. If you don’t report them by today some inspector is bound to ask to see them and will issue you a fine. It’s easy to report them online… BUT WAIT! The MSHA site is down AGAIN for maintenance! It was down 5 days in February. Why can’t these guys keep the lights on. I have NEVER discovered any other site down for maintenance. I hope you don’t have to look up a number to report a serious accident or anything. If you do and they say you took too long to call or your quarterlies were filed late just show them this..
I rarely if ever have used this platform to express an opinon, preferring to have the site just report facts, but I have a fact to report that I definitely have an opinion on and so, here it is.
MSHA is changing how it counts fatalities. It’s seemingly part of what the Assistant Secretary said at TRAM last October about his desire to “Blur” the lines between Metal-Nonmetal and Coal. As a trainer who does his best to satisfy MSHA by providing relevent material it’s not only helpful but necessary to divide the two. The rules are different and miners most often are going into just one type of mine, not both.
The announcement appears on the MSHA web page that fatalities not be seperated and indeed fatalities number one and two occured in coal mines and three and four were in metal-nonmetal mines. Without a careful counting as the year goes on it will be difficult to compare to previous years or tell how the very different industries are doing. Other helpful training materials that MSHA has provided in the past to help us understand where we are even within the various industries of metal-nonmetal have disappeared. Secretary Zatezalo rightly said last October that as we approach zero fatalities we have to change our approach to continue to make advances, but blurring lines and failing to interpret and publish data isn’t a change in the right direction. If anything these changes will simply make it more difficult to understand where we are and if we don’t know that we certainly can’t tell where we’re going.
We will continue to seperate the industries here even in the title to fatalities, referencing them both by MSHA’s fatality number and numbering them by Metal Nonmetal and Coal. You can also select the Categories and click on tags on the right side of the page to further select industries. I started this page to assist in my own training material design. If there’s any way I can help in yours by interpreting data here let me know. MSHA doesn’t seem to be doing it much anymore.
-Randy
Just a heads up that while MSHA was unaffected by the recent government shutdown the links to MSHA may not work for several days because of a scheduled maintenance by the Department of Labor. Instead you’ll get this message:
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is conducting scheduled system maintenance beginning Friday, February 15 at 5:00 p.m. ET through Tuesday, February 19 at 8:00 a.m. ET. Most DOL websites and web systems will be affected and unavailable to the public.
The National Contact Center remains open 24 hours a day to contact:
Seems like I just got used to writing 2018 and I have to change again. For those of you who get course announcements please forgive any 2018’s that show up on dates and assume I’m not training in the past and it should be the current year! Course announcements come out more or less monthly and if you can attend a class in SE Pennsylvania and want to get notices email me. You can also see the current schedule and sign up for classes here.
Every new year brings challenges more difficult than getting the number right. Safety is a never ending challenge. Mining has been getting increasingly safer, but the fewer workers who are hurt or killed the harder it is to improve that number. Assistant Secretary of MSHA Zatezalo made this point well at the Mine Safety Academy in October when he said we are close to our goal, but just as in football the game changes when you’re a few yards from the end zone. We have to change our game too if we’re going to improve from here on. How are you going to change your game this year?
September 13, 2017 8:30 AM – 4 PM
Each September Mine Safety Instructors from Penn State University’s Miner Training Program, safety and health specialists from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), legal and industry safety professionals conduct a one-day professional development workshop for mine supervisors, competent persons, and safety professionals. Lunch is provided.
The purpose of the workshop is to enhance safety at your operation through education and training in timely topics, such as:
Click HERE to Register for this FREE Seminar! See you there.
Two mining deaths within 24 hours in which the victims were working alone and in restricted areas where there were hazardous conditions highlights the need to observe best practices to avoid hazardous areas and avoid working alone, among other tips. Both were in underground mines, one coal and one limestone.
Download Alert (pdf) here.
