Bear Down on Safety, MSHA Tells Metal, Nonmetal Operators
"STOP the Fatalities" was the message on a large red stop sign posted on MSHA's site this week, with the agency saying four workers at metal and nonmetal mines died from March 23 to April 5, 2007, raising this year's total in that sector to seven.
Sharing information about the events, which stem from different causes, can help operators prevent them, says MSHA, which posted the first three Fatalgrams for this run of incidents but had not yet posted the fourth as of Monday evening.
One was a struck-by incident when the anchorage point of a cable-tightening operation failed. Another was a drowning that no one witnessed. The third was a driving fatality when the worker's truck failed to negotiate a road near the bottom of a main tailings dam and his truck toppled, landing parting in the water. Visit www.msha.gov to see the best practices listed for each of these incidents.