An administrative law judge fined the owners of the Quecreek Mine and an engineering company the maximum -- $55,000 each -- for playing "Russian roulette" with the lives of 18 miners who barely survived an underground disaster in 2002.
In a stinging decision released Monday in Washington, Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission Judge Robert J. Lesnick said that PBS Coals Inc. and Musser Engineering knowingly submitted to state and federal regulators inaccurate maps of Somerset County's Quecreek Mine.
And they later failed to take prudent precautions to safeguard the lives of 18 miners as they mined coal blocking millions of gallons of water stored in a nearby abandoned tunnel, Lesnick said.
On July 24, nine miners waded through in-rushing water to escape the flood, but nine others were trapped for three days before they were saved by a rescue mission Lesnick termed "miraculous." Lesnick fined each company $55,000 and overruled a previous federal decision to consider the companies' actions "moderately" negligent.
The judge labeled the two Somerset County companies "grossly negligent."
Downtown attorney Douglas C. Lasota said client Musser Engineering would appeal the fines. PBS Coals' attorney Vincent J. Barbera in Somerset echoed Musser's plan, adding that he "strongly disagreed" with Lesnick's findings.
"PBS Coals has always considered the safety of miners to be the utmost of importance," Barbera said.
Barbera and Lasota declined to comment on a separate case pitting the miners against PBS and Musser. That lawsuit continues to wind its way through Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. But the attorney for eight of the nine trapped Quecreek miners, Howard Messer, Downtown, said the federal ruling "has vindicated our work to find justice."
"It's really a total vindication of what we've been saying for six years. The miners have had to wait six years for confirmation of what we knew to be true in 2002," Messer said.
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