Examiner
The employee was found unresponsive at approximately 2:05 PM on the offside of the #1 belt at the portal entrance of the surface mine. Preliminary findings has determined the employee received fatal injuries when coming in contact with the belt conveyor.
On Friday August 25, 2017, at approximately 12:08 p.m., Owen Jones, a 51-year-old mine examiner with over 27 years of mining experience fell onto a moving conveyor belt and received fatal injuries. Jones was attempting to cross the conveyor belt to complete his examination of the belt when he fell. The fatal accident occurred because the crossover provided by the operator was not suitable for Jones and other miners to use as a means to cross over the belt when it was moving. In addition, the operator had not installed a guard to prevent Jones from crossing over the conveyor belt in an unsafe manner.
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The mine operator did not provide an adequate crossover outby the No. 2 belt drive for miners to safely cross the moving No. 1 conveyor belt.
Corrective action: The mine operator removed the crossover and constructed an adequate crossover for miners to use (see Appendix F).
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The configuration of the drive on the outby side of the rock box was not constructed to prevent a miner from using it as means to cross the moving conveyor belt.
Corrective action: The mine operator installed guards at certain belt transfer locations to prevent miners from using them as a means to cross a moving conveyor belt.
Findings from MSHA's final investigation report, which supersedes the preliminary narrative above.
- Activity at time of incident
- Cross Over (Conveyor)
- Subunit / location
- UNDERGROUND
- Underground location
- LAST OPEN CROSSCUT
- Mining method
- Continuous Mining
- Accident type
- Fall onto or against objects
- Source of injury
- BELT CONVEYORS
- Nature of injury
- MULTIPLE INJURIES
- Body part affected
- MULTIPLE PARTS (MORE THAN ONE MAJOR)
- Total mining experience
- 27 years
- Experience at this mine
- 1 year
- Experience in this job
- 1 year
- Degree of injury
- FATALITY
Every record on this page mirrors what MSHA publishes under its Open Government Data program, refreshed weekly. MSHA does not publish per-accident URLs (the Accidents data is distributed as a single bulk file), so this is how to retrieve the source for the specific record below:
- Final investigation report: Read MSHA's final report
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Accident record:
Download MSHA Accidents.zip
then search for Document number
220172490002(the unique key per MSHA Form 7000-1) -
Mine record:
MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System
and search by Mine ID
4608194 - All MSHA datasets: Open Government Data program directory covering Accident, Mines, Inspections, Violations, etc.