Criminal probe sought in disaster

The general manager and possibly other senior staff members at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where nine miners died in August 2007, hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, said a congressional investigation released Thursday.

The report also said that the mining company should never have submitted a request to remove coal from the section of mine where the collapse occurred, and that federal mining officials should not have approved the proposal, because of foreseeable dangers.

The congressional committee conducting the investigation sent a referral letter late last month to the Department of Justice asking the department to investigate whether the mine manager, Laine W. Adair, on his own or in conspiracy with others from the mining company, willfully concealed facts or made intentionally false statements to federal mining investigators about the condition of the mine before the August disaster.

On Aug. 6, roof supports in a section of the mine gave way in a major collapse that registered 3.9 on the Richter scale and left six miners entombed. Ten days later, three miners who were working as rescuers died after more tunnels fell.

The deaths were avoidable, the 150-page report said, because five months before the August disaster in the north section of the mine, a similar collapse had occurred in a southern section, offering clear "red flags" indicating that the mine was unstable.

Rather than telling federal mining officials about the March collapse, the report said, the mine operator cleaned up the site and went on with work in a nearby section.

Aside from the instability indicated by the March collapse, known as a bump or bounce, the report said that notes from 2004 from the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land where Crandall Canyon is located and leased it to the mine operator, indicated that the mine had become unsafe and that pillars had already begun deteriorating.

Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., which owns and operates the mine, has insisted that the collapse was caused by an earthquake.