CORRECTION OF HAZARD MADE DURING OR IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE INSPECTION 1. The accumulation of ice was removed from the stairway in the escapement shaft. CORRECTION OF HAZARDS MADE SINCE THE LAST FEDERAL INSPECTION 1. The minimum standard of timbering was complied with in all working places. 2. The warning sign has been removed from the west wall of the explosivesstorage magazine and located properly. 3. Room and entry crosscuts were made at 60-foot intervals. 4. Stoppings built along the main haulage road since the last Federal inspection were constructed of incombustible material. 5. The ventilation doors on the 1 west south haulage road inby 18 north were erected in pairs to form an air lock large enough to contain an entire trip; and the single doors on the 1 west south haulage road between 13 and 14 north, and at the mouth of 19 north off 4 west south were attended. 6. The abandoned room-panel entries between 14 north and 18 north off 1 west south were sealed in a substantial manner with incombustible material. 7. An additional mine examiner was employed to make the preshift examination of the mine. 8. The mine examiners placed the date at or near the face of each place examined. 9. A rule has been established prohibiting motormen from back-pooling, and no back-poling was observed during this inspection. 10. The trolley wire was guarded effectively at the man-trip stations in the working sections. 11. The power wire has been removed from No. 11 room off 13 north 1 west south. 12. The drive belts on the pumps in the main pumping station in the 1 west south were guarded adequately. 13. Several bags of rock dust were provided at each ventilation door. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The cooperation of officials and employees during this inspection is gratefully acknowledged. The prevention of accidents requires cooperation between officials and employees, and such cooperation can only be attained when facts concerning hazards are known. It is hoped that the facts in this report, therefore, will help in preventing accidents at this mine. Respectfully submitted. FRANK PERZ, Coal-Mine Inspector. TABLE 1.-Analyses of air samples collected March 1947, mine No. 5, Centralia Coal Co. TABLE 2.-Analyses of dust samples collected March 1947, mine No. 5, Centralia Coal Co. Mr. ANKENY. That concludes my statement, gentlemen, and I shall be glad to answer any questions. Mr. KELLEY. You know, they talk about the authority of State inspectors to state whether a condition is dangerous or not. I know many, many times in my experience in the State of Pennsylvania, the inspector has gone into a mine and said that a dangerous condition exists, and it was disputed by the mine foreman. Now, who is going to be the judge? Well, you have to rely on the State inspectors. You cannot spell that out. It is a matter of judgment. Mr. ANKENY. That is right, sir. However, the State inspector could order the withdrawal of those men, and they would have to be withdrawn. Then his order could later be challenged, and as the secretary of mines stated, he could send a commission to the mine, and they might find that the State inspector erred in judgment, and order the men to go back without the recommended corrections' being made. Mr. KELLEY. I think, Mr. Ankeny, you appeared before the Senate committee, and you gave examples of what might be termed conditions in mines that would be imminent danger. Would you care to submit for our record the same examples? Mr. ANKENY. I do not believe I gave that. I believe that Mr. Forbes had that in his statement. It may be in the statement that he issued yesterday. Mr. KELLEY. No, he did not have it yesterday. Mr. ANKENY. We would be glad to submit that same information. Mr. KELLEY. I think it would be well for the record if you did that. (The information referred to was subsequently supplied by Mr. Ankeny, and is as follows:) SOME EXAMPLES OF IMMINENT DANGERS THAT MAY BE ENCOUNTERED IN 1. Loose, unsupported roof or rib where men work or travel. 2. The use of black blasting powder. 3. Dangerous accumulations of methane in or adjacent to live workings. 4. Inadequate applications of rock dust in live workings of bituminous-coal mines on the surfaces that are not naturally wet. 5. Lack of adequate safety catches on cages used for transporting men. 6. Smoking and use of open flames in gassy mines. Mr. KELLEY. Are there any questions, Mr. Perkins? Mr. PERKINS. Nothing. He has covered it very well. Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Wier? Mr. WIER. No questions. Mr. KELLEY. I have no more. So that concludes our work for today. Thank you very much, Mr. Ankeny. I am sorry I kept you waiting so long. Mr. ANKENY. That is perfectly all right. Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Perkins wishes to insert in the record also a statement of Driscoll O. Scanlan before the legislature committee at Centralia, Ill. (The statement referred to is as follows:) STATEMENT OF DRISCOLL O. SCANLAN BEFORE LEGISLATURE COMMITTEE AT Gentlemen, I consider this investigating committee the most important; it is from this committee that the people of Illinois, and especially the miners and their families will derive the most benefits by you gentlemen conveying back to the General Assembly of Illinois what is necessary in line of adequate laws. I have prepared this statement in order to give you gentlemen a comprehensive report of the facts leading up to this disaster; also information on the life of an honest inspector, and some of the abuses he is subject to. I have now had time to get a little rest and collect myself; have gone through my files and records, and believe I will make a better witness than I did before the other committees. When required to appear before the other State committee I had just put in about 112 hours of the most arduous work and heart-breaking experience of my life with only 9 hours' sleep. I knew personally every miner in this mine. I helped recover bodies of older men that knew me from a small boy, of younger men that I had gone to school with. There is no committee, be it the Governor's, or what not, that is going to make the families of the men killed in this explosion, the survivors of the explosion, or the miners in the other mines in my district believe that I am in any way responsible for this disaster. They all knew, and know, that I had done everything in my power to prevent this disaster. And had my recommendations been complied with, and had not the director and mining board overruled and overridden me roughshod, these miners would be alive today. Some people not acquainted with this situation from reading some of the newspapers and the report of the Governor's committee, may have the opinion that I placed my job above that of the lives of the miners. Nothing could be further from the truth and fact. And I want to inform the public right now, that everyone involved in this dis aster had the privilege of having a representative on this Governor's committee except myself. While it is a fact that I could not enforce the law and stay on the job under Medill, I want to say right now, if quitting my job would have saved one life, I would have been more than glad to have done it. When Medill and the mining board whipped me and the Centralia Coal Co. whipped the miners and hired their leader and local union president away from them and gave him a job hoseing, I was ready to quit my job I went to see Mr. Tom Bush, a member of the pit committee, and told him that I thought that I might just as well resign, as it did not seem that I could do anything to help them. as the clique overruled me and that they would make life miserable for me. This old gentleman's reply was something like this: "Scanlan, you are the only friend we have to come around this mine and if you can possibly stay on the job, please do so." He said, "Please stay on and do what you can for us. You do manage to get something out of the company once in a while. We would rather have a friend as an inspector, even if he cannot do anything for us, than to have some inspector who is not our friend; maybe some day you will be able to do something for us." And that was the main reason I stayed on the job and did not resign. I am convinced now that Mr. Bush had a feeling that some day this disaster would occur and when it did, if I was still on the job, there would be no whitewash of the disaster. In order to give you gentlemen an idea of the feeling of the miners, please permit me to quote the following from a letter I received from out of my district, postmarked Du Quoin, Ill., April 4, 1947. "With deep regret, I have kept up with the Wamac mine disaster. Also noted the humanitarian part and heroic stand you took in exposing those who were guilty of violating not only the mining law, but of every code where decent manhood was involved. And, furthermore, every man I have talked to-and that has been several-they all speak of you in the highest terms. And, as for me, I am glad I can say I worked in a mine under your inspection; and I wish there were more like you. So, Driscoll, stay right in there and continue to expose those rats wherever you catch them, as the common miners need more men like you.” * * * The Governor's committee said that I should have closed the mine down, even if it meant the quitting of my job. What point would I have gained by shutting this mine down and then quitting? The director would have reopened the mine, another inspector would have been appointed, more care would have been taken in the selection of my successor, there would have been only one inspection report on the bulletin board for the scrutiny of the newspapermen and it probably would not have been too actual; no one would have talked to the newspapermen and a real whitewash job could have been done. At the time of this explosion the mine was 10 times cleaner that it was at the time the Commission inspected it and permitted it to continue operating. If the dust had been ignited at the time of the inspection by the Commission, the ventilating fan and the tipple would have been demolished. No one knows any better than the coal-mine members of the Governor's committee that the inspectors were only permitted to exercise what authority some of the major coal companies, the director, and the mining board wanted them to have. Section 1, paragraph B, pages 7 and 8 of the general mining law reads in part as follows: "Said board also shall control and direct the State mine inspectors hereinafter provided for, in the discharge of their duties, and shall have the power, and shall in person and through the State mine inspectors see that all the provisions of the State mining laws are enforced." On this last sentence the mining board has always taken the position that they are the boss. This is common knowledge in the coal industry of Illinois. All appeals from the inspectors' recommendations are taken to the director and mining board. They have always been the boss; this is an acknowledged fact in the industry. Now, gentlemen, in order to give you an idea of the interlinking procedure of the coal companies and the department, please permit me to read the following from an old timer in this inspection game. "MY DEAR DRISCOLL: As one who has been through the mill, I sincerely sympathize with you at this distressful time. The inspector with the responsibility on him sets his course to conscientiously carry out his duties, then the pressure is on, and the telephone calls from the heads of the companies to the department in Springfield, and then the modifications or the promises, etc., and then the accident happens and the inspector is the goat." I have always tried to take care of the miners in my district, and went as far as I was permitted to go by the director. While trying to take care of the miners, I have also tried to take care of myself, so I could not be made the goat in case of a disaster of this kind, so always wrote the actual conditions of the mines as I found them, showing no partiality to either the coal company or miners, writing both up when I found them violating the law. It was reports of this kind that the director did not like. I remember on March 13, 1946, when the director called me to Springfield and severely reprimanded me for my inspection report of March 6 and 7, 1946. He told me that he was surprised that I would again make these recommendations after the commission and the mining board had found my recommendations of Decmber 13 and 14, 1945, unfounded. He said that "those damned Hunks" would not know the condition of their mine if it would not be for me writing it up and calling it to their attention. Said my reports looked like a "dam Federal inspector's report" and if I wanted to write those kind of reports I should have gone with the United States Bureau of Mines. He told me if I expected to stay in the department I would have to cut the size of my reports down and omit some of the things I was reporting. He also told me that I had "a hell of a lot of ability, but no dam sense of balance;" that I was all for the miners. The letter of the miners of March 3, 1946, to the Governor, with a memorandum from Mr. Chapman, was on his desk. He was plenty angry about this letter and handed it over to me to read. The miners had included a picture of a widow and several orphans of a recent mine disaster that they had clipped from the United Mine Workers Journal. Medill gave it a pitch to the side and said, "And they send such rot as this along." As has been brought out by the other investigating committee, the director's reply to Mr. Chapman was: "The complaint sounds a good deal worse than it really is. The present condition at the mine is not any different than it has been during the past 10 or 15 years, etc." So it can readily be understood that no little, lone inspector out in the field had a chance against the big boys in Springfield when they felt like this about the miners and the inspector. When I left the office Medill said, "I think you now know what kind of reports I want." On December 13 and 14, 1945, when I inspected this mine, I found it had again been permitted to get in a deplorable condition. The dust from the haulage operations over extremely dirty roads, and from cutting and loading operations were presenting a very serious explosion hazard and I made the necessary recommendations to eliminate this explosion hazard and forwarded the recommendations on to the director. On December 20 Medill called me on the phone and told me to come into Springfield the next morning and to meet Benn Schull, of Terre Haute, Ind., a member of the mining board, in the Leland Hotel at 9 a. m. After discussing my recommendations with Mr. Schull, who told me I had no legal right to make hardly any of the recommendations, we went over to the office of the department, where the mining board was to meet. I stayed around the office all day while the board was in session, but was never permitted to appear before the board to tell them the conditions of the mine. When the board adjourned, Medill came to me and said that they had appointed a commission to inspect the mine and for me to stay out of the picture and away from the mine while the commission was at the mine. I tried to tell him the conditions of the mine and told him I should be permitted to shut the mine down until they complied with my recommendations. He said the commission and board would decide that. I then told him I thought all members of the commission should visit the 13 and 14 north off 1 west (as I had some confidence in Mr. Reak and did not want him to miss this section). Medill told me when I got home to call Bob Weir and make the suggestion to him. When I called Weir he could hardly hear me over the phone, so told me to meet the commission at the hotel in Centralia. When I went to the hotel in Centralia I found that two of the original members of the commission had become ill and were not there. The commission consisted of Robert Weir, Murrell Reak, Charles Blakeney, John Golden, and Benn Schull, who had come over from Terre Haute, Ind., to replace Mr. Gill. The commission had my inspection report and recommendations. Mr. Weir read the entire report to the commission to acquaint them with it; Benn Schull again taking the position that I had no legal right to make hardly any of the recommendations and said that I was trying to tell the management how to run their mine. Schull and I entered into quite an argument. Whenever he would refer to the miners, it was "the -s this and the -s that," instead of referring to them as the men or miners. I was talking to Mr. Niermann shortly after the commission had made the mine; he said, "You know one of those commissioners was standing out on the entry and noticed the good air traveling down the entry and he said, 'You know these -s here don't know what they want; you got enough air here to blow them out of the mine.'" I said to Niermann, "I know who said that: that was Benn Schull." He looked astonished when I told him so quickly who had made the nasty remark. I then told him that in the conversations that I had with Schull he always referred to the miners as -S. I knew after my discussion with the commission in the hotel that they were under definite orders to find my recommendations and the charges of the miners against the mine manager and superintendent as unfounded. I had told Schull that the mine manager hardly ever left the shaft bottom and the miners were complaining about it; in fact, the miners were telling me that they see me in |