Officials interview employees at Kentucky mine where 5 workers died

HARLAN, Ky. (AP) -- Mine technician Tony Bledsoe worried about the wall of fiberglass blocks he helped build to seal in poisonous gas at a southeastern Kentucky mine where five miners were killed in an explosion. Many of the blocks were broken when they were delivered, he said.

"The thing about mines -- you use what they give you," Bledsoe said.

Officials are closely examining the seal at Kentucky Darby Mine No. 1 as part of an investigation into a May 20 blast. They have said the explosion was fueled by methane gas and the blocks did not withstand the blast.

Bledsoe, one of the 26 Kentucky Darby LLC employees subpoenaed by state and federal officials for closed-door interviews this week, also said Thursday he and others weren't trained to build the alternative seal. Conventional seals are typically made of concrete.

"We weren't told how to build them," he said. "Our boss, he didn't stick around when we were building them."

The meetings began Wednesday and continue through Friday. Family members of miners killed in the blast have protested the meetings because state officials rejected a request to allow their representatives to attend the interviews and ask the witnesses questions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has issued a moratorium on the unconventional seals in all mines.

The federal agency on Thursday also ordered that three eastern Kentucky mines be evacuated after a seal breach was discovered in one mine. No one was hurt. The breach was found at the Consol of Kentucky Inc.'s Jones Fork E-3 Mine in Knott County, MSHA said in a statement. Two adjacent mines -- Ember Contracting's No. 10 mine and Abundance Coal Inc.'s No. 1 mine -- were evacuated as a precaution.

"As announced last week, we are requiring that alternative seals be evaluated and corrective steps be taken wherever a hazard exists," David G. Dye, MSHA's acting administrator, said in the statement.

Another miner, Kevin Dixon, said he helped build two of the three seals destroyed in the Kentucky Darby blast. He said he and the other workers on the second shift learned how to construct the seals as they worked alongside their superintendent, Amon "Cotton" Brock, one of the men killed.

"If you're in the coal mine for 10 years, common sense tells you how to build them," said Dixon, who has worked in mines for a decade.

He said Darby was the first mine where he used the fiberglass blocks to seal a section of an underground mine that had been stripped of coal.

The mine has been closed since the explosion. Preliminary reports showed that three miners died from carbon monoxide poisoning, while the other two were killed by the heat and explosion.

Tony Payne was supposed to work at the mine that night but had taken the shift off. The blast occurred just minutes after he normally would have started his job.

Payne wouldn't elaborate on what he was asked during the private interview, only saying "they always ask about safety." The mine maintenance worker said he would continue to mine, but not at Darby, where the memories of his lost friends are too painful.

"It's hard to explain," Payne said as tried to describe how he felt about dodging the explosion. "I guess they'd be digging me out too."

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