Electrician
A fatal incident occurred while traveling the external slope on a rubber tired four wheeler.
On November 1, 2021, at 4:56 p.m., Brian Wallen, a 49 year-old assistant maintenance shift supervisor with 25 years of mining experience, died when he lost control of the No. 7 Electric Mine Utility Vehicle (EMU) while traveling down a mine slope. The No. 7 EMU crashed at the bottom of the slope, pinning Wallen underneath. The accident occurred because the mine operator did not: 1) have procedures in place for safe travel of rubber-tired, self-propelled equipment on the Surface Slope, and 2) remove unsafe equipment from service to prevent miners from operating equipment with known safety defects.
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The mine operator did not have procedures in place for safe travel of rubber-tired, self-propelled equipment on the Surface Slope.
Corrective action: The mine operator developed and implemented a written plan that prohibits the operation of all self-propelled mobile equipment on the Surface Slope.
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The mine operator did not remove unsafe equipment from service to prevent miners from operating equipment with known safety defects.
Corrective action: The mine operator developed and implemented written procedures to conduct pre-operational examinations on all personnel carrier equipment and properly remove equipment from service, including locking out and tagging out, when safety defects are present.
Findings from MSHA's final investigation report, which supersedes the preliminary narrative above.
- Activity at time of incident
- Mantrip
- Subunit / location
- UNDERGROUND
- Underground location
- SLOPE/INCLINED SHAFT
- Mining method
- Continuous Mining
- Accident type
- Caught in, under or between a moving and a stationary object
- Source of injury
- MINE JEEP,KERSEY,JITNEY
- Nature of injury
- MULTIPLE INJURIES
- Body part affected
- MULTIPLE PARTS (MORE THAN ONE MAJOR)
- Total mining experience
- 25 years
- Experience at this mine
- 1 year
- Experience in this job
- 25 years
- 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
220213230011(the unique key per MSHA Form 7000-1) -
Mine record:
MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System
and search by Mine ID
4609029 - All MSHA datasets: Open Government Data program directory covering Accident, Mines, Inspections, Violations, etc.