Half of Massey miners scheduled for interviews about April disaster have missed appointments

U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration investigators are examining the April explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners at the Upper Big Branch mine of Massey Energy. Half of those scheduled for interviews have not shown up. "Interviews of employees of Massey and its operating subsidiary, Performance Coal Co., began last week at MSHA's National Mine Health and Safety Academy near Beckley," Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports. Ron Wooten, director of the state mine safety agency, said that "through Tuesday, seven of the 14 Massey or Performance employees who had been asked did not appear at their scheduled interviews," Ward writes.

"Under federal law, MSHA does not have authority to use subpoenas to force witnesses to appear for the closed-door interviews," Ward writes. "MSHA has subpoena power only if it is trying to force witnesses to appear at public hearings or interview sessions." West Virginia law "gives Wooten's action authority to subpoena witnesses for the private interviews, but so far the [Gov. Joe] Manchin administration has not exercised that authority," Ward writes. Wooten told Ward that if he needed to subpoena witnesses he would. (Read more)