Testing a 'guardian angel' shelter that could save trapped miners

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MORGANTOWN, W.VA. - In this town notorious for incidents of spontaneous combustion, this "ring of fire" was fully controlled and, in fact, quite scholarly.

The West Virginia University researchers who applied 1,000 degrees of fiery heat to a giant steel box hope that their work ultimately will save the lives of coal miners.

In a garagelike room, they staged a flash fire similar to what might occur in a coal mine, to test what one participant called "the guardian angel," a shelter for miners who are trapped underground by fires, explosions or cave-ins.

"Without question, this will save a lot of lives," said Hota GangaRao, a professor in WVU's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who has been working to perfect underground refuges for four years.

Emergency shelters already are deployed in West Virginia mines, pursuant to a federal law and regulations adopted in the aftermath of the Sago mine disaster of Jan. 2, 2006, near Buckhannon, W.Va. Eleven of 12 men who were trapped underground after an explosion eventually perished from toxic gases.

GangaRao said many of those shelters were developed and deployed without the sort of rigorous testing that is now occurring at WVU, including the shelters' ability to withstand explosions and fire. "They are mostly tents to protect against carbon monoxide," he said.

That is why he and other researchers, with observers from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, created the "ring of fire" Tuesday around a steel enclosure, 24 feet long, 8 feet wide and 5 feet high, that is equipped to accommodate up to 10 miners for four days. Inside were water, food, communications gear, a toilet and curtains that absorb the carbon dioxide that the miners would exhale.

Also inside were sensors to monitor the air quality and temperature as the exterior was bathed in flames for about three minutes to simulate an underground fire. Earlier tests subjected the steel enclosure to explosives and crushing weights that simulated a cave-in.

Federal law requires shelters within 1,000 feet of the working face of mines. For now, mine owners are allowed to use chambers that have met with state approvals. Far more stringent federal guidelines will take effect after 2013, GangaRao said, and the WVU team wants to be the first to develop a refuge that passes muster.

An MSHA study of mining accidents from 1900 to 2006 determined that 264 miners died during rescue operations or escape attempts after the initial incidents.

The type of shelter tested Tuesday would not be sufficient in a situation like the one in Chile, where 33 workers trapped in a gold and copper mine were discovered alive 17 days after a tunnel collapse, and may face months of waiting for a rescue shaft to be drilled.

Among those observing Tuesday's test was the Rev. Jack Henry, a former coal operator-turned-pastor who has formed a company, Trinity Resources, to market and sell the chambers.

"We're geared up to mass-produce," he said. "We expect to go worldwide."

Henry said if such a refuge had been in place in the Sago mine, "no doubt in my mind all of them would have survived."

More testing lies ahead, including having some people actually live in the chamber for extended periods, GangaRao said. "I'm planning to do it myself. The proof of the pudding is if we want people to be confident, we have to be confident."

(Reach Jon Schmitz at jschmitz(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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