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By Ken Ward Jr., Staff Writer for the Charleston Gazette
Smoke pours from Consolidation Coal Co.'s No. 9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, in November 1968. Seventy-eight miners died in the disaster, and 19 remain entombed underground. A lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that the company and at least one employee covered up evidence about the explosion.
Forty-six years ago this month, an explosion at Consolidation Coal Co.'s No. 9 Mine in Farmington killed 78 miners. For decades since then, investigators have never really explained fully what caused the disaster.
On Thursday, a lawsuit was filed alleging that Consolidation and at least one of its employees covered up key evidence about the explosion. The lawsuit says families of the miners are entitled to compensation they were wrongly deprived of because of information that was never revealed to government investigators, the public or the families who lost loved ones when the mine blew up.
The lawsuit, filed in Marion Circuit Court, seeks class-action status on behalf of the families of the 78 miners who died in the disaster. It asks for damages of $110,000 in compensation per miner â the maximum allowed in wrongful-death cases in 1968 â plus interest and punitive damages.
The legal complaint cites recently uncovered information, including some made public in an NPR News story and in journalist Bonnie Stewart's book, "No. 9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster."
At about 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, 1968, explosions and fire spread through the No. 9 Mine. There were 99 workers underground at the time. Twenty-one of them escaped with their lives. Some died from the force of the blast. Many others were overcome by toxic gases. Conditions hampered recovery efforts, and the bodies of 19 of the men remain entombed in the mine.
While Farmington led to passage of the 1969 federal mine safety law, a government investigation of the disaster was never really completed. A lengthy report was not published until 1990 and, even then, it said "the actual cause of the explosion could not be determined" and made no recommendations ...
READ REST OF STORY Lawsuit alleges cover-up after 1968 Farmington No. 9 Mine disaster> by Ken Ward Jr. for the Charleston Gazette
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