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mine rescue continued
From PacifiCorp's Jim Bridger mine near Rock Springs, Wyo., Bridger Coal's "Blue" Mine Rescue Team competes at the National Competion.
tor of the closed-circuit breathing appara- tus. Draeger showcased several of its lat- est safety and rescue products including the state-of-the-art ChargeAir System, a system designed to enhance the emergen-
cy response plan and capabilities of underground teams. The company also previewed its newest self-contained res- cue system (SCSR), the Oxy 6000, which will be launched in the U.S. next year.
Mine Rescue Has Come a Long Way Since 2006, mine rescue training has become much more stringent as safety standards have increased. The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act of 2006 regulations required more mine rescue teams and more training by existing teams. "Some of the good things that came out of Darby, Sago and Aracoma were the number of teams and the awareness that you had to be better prepared for an emergency situa- tion. Now we have ensured that rescue teams are ready to go in a minute's notice. We saw that at Upper Big Branch. Though the explo- sion happened somewhere around 3 p.m., by midnight mine rescue teams from all over the region had already found 25 of the 29 bodies," said Stricklin. "There were four unaccounted for. One was bypassed, and the other three were very close to where we pulled them out of the mine because of explosions. The speed of response and the teams' abilities to find those fallen heroes proves how meticulously those rescuers worked. It was a very bad situation that we were able to get on top of in a way we proba- bly couldn't only a few years ago." Kevin Vaughn, a mine rescue team leader from Alliance Resources' River View mine in western Kentucky, who has
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Company Profile - Paid Advertisement 40 www.coalage.com December 2011