Operator history. Regulatory context. Citation contests.
Mining Incidents is a research tool built on US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) public data. Every reportable accident on file — fatalities, serious injuries, dates, mines, controllers, classifications, the investigator's narrative — searchable by operator, controller, mine, classification, or any keyword in the narrative.
Click a result to open the operator's full incident history and subscribe to alerts.
Use cases
- 105(c) discrimination defensePull the complete prior-incident record for the mine and operator at the heart of a 105(c) action. Build pattern evidence (or rebut it) without spending hours in the MSHA Data Retrieval System. Browse operators on /operators.
- Citation and "flagrant" violation contestsCompare your client's incident profile against peer operators in the same classification and subunit type. The classification hub at /classifications breaks every accident type out by operator, year, and severity.
- FMSHRC proceedings prepEvery record carries a stable canonical URL at
/incident/[id]and the underlying MSHA document number, so citations in briefs are verifiable and auditable. - Compliance review and pre-deal diligenceBefore underwriting a new mining-industry client or advising on an asset acquisition, pull the controller chain's full incident history at /controllers — operator turnover doesn't reset MSHA's record of what happened on the property.
- Competitive intelligence and prospectingWhen a fatality lands at a mining-industry firm you don't represent, the operator page surfaces the prior-pattern context that informs a board pitch on compliance overhaul or crisis-response retainer.
What's in the dataset
- ·Every reportable accident MSHA has on file — fatalities, serious injuries, and other defined incidents that operators are required to report within strict timeframes.
- ·Operator and controller identity at time of accident — including historical operators who later transferred the mine.
- ·Mine, state, FIPS county code, MSHA mine ID, MSHA document number — every field needed to cite, subpoena, or audit the underlying record.
- ·The MSHA investigator's written narrative — what happened, in the agency's own words.
- ·Classification, accident type, occupation, subunit (underground / surface / preparation plant), mining equipment, controller, controller-history dates, district, primary SIC.
- ·Historical coverage from January 2000 to present, ingested from the MSHA Open Data release cycle on a weekly cadence (typical lag from incident filing to availability is one to two weeks).
Example queries
A few questions defense and compliance counsel ask the dataset. Each is a single search on the public record.
- Which operators have the most recorded fatalities since 2000?Performance Coal, Jim Walter Resources, Consolidation Coal lead the list.
- Every fatal roof-fall on file with MSHA, by operator and yearPattern evidence for citation contests where roof control is in dispute.
- Recent West Virginia fatalities and the operators behind themUseful for prospective-client diligence on a WV mine acquisition.
- Methane-related fatalities, narratives included18 records on file. Read the investigator's narrative on each.
Free and paid access
The full search interface is free. Browse, read narratives, cite specific records — there is no paywall on the site itself.
The Pro API adds programmatic access — fetch every accident at an operator in a single JSON response, monitor for new fatalities at specific mines via the per-state and per-classification RSS feeds, integrate the dataset into compliance dashboards or regulatory-tracking workflows. The Pro tier is intended for high-volume research and automated integration.
Citation
When citing a specific record in a brief, motion, or regulatory filing, link directly to the canonical incident URL — every accident has a stable permalink at /incident/[id]. Citation formats for the dataset as a whole are listed on /citing.