Greene County coal miner dies in workplace accident

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 17, 2012 | 12:05 PM

Last week, a coal miner at a Consol site in Greene County was killed on the job. William Mock, 61, was struck by a falling rock on Thursday afternoon, according to the Associated Press:

“Initial indications are that he was struck by a rock along the track haulage,” Consol spokeswoman Lynn Seay said in an email. Ms. Seay said the worker was transported to a local hospital where he died.
…The mine is a large longwall operation that employs about 585 workers. Last year, it produced 4.3 million tons of coal.

The mine, which straddles the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border, was sited for safety violations last year. The Charleston Gazette has more details on the Blacksville No. 2 mine:

In each of the last two years, Blacksville No. 2 recorded injury rates that were slightly worse than the national average, according to MSHA data. In April, the operation was targeted by an MSHA “impact inspection” that produced 20 citations, nearly half of which were listed as serious violations, according to MSHA.
During a quarterly inspection that started July 2 and is ongoing, MSHA officials cited the operation for 10 alleged roof-control violations, including eight that agency inspectors considered serious.