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BECKLEY, W.Va. – Massey Energy Co. recklessly ignored country and allowed chanceful conditions to build exclusive a West Virginia mine until a wind terminal year killed 29 men in the deadliest U.S. combust circumstance since 1970, according to an autarkical inform free Thursday.

The inform by a past crowning federal mine regulator, licenced by the state's then-governor, said Massey could have prevented the April, 5, 2010, disaster with accepted country practices, including better word to reduce potentially explosive levels of pedal and detritus in the tunnels.

"A consort that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly careless manner, and 29 combust miners paying with their lives for the joint risk-taking," the think concluded.

The think supported the federal government's theory that methane pedal mixed with Brobdingnagian volumes of explosive combust detritus turned a small worker into a preventable earth-shattering explosion

"The disaster at Upper Big Branch was manmade and could have been prevented had Massey Energy followed basic, well-tested and historically proven country procedures," investigators wrote.

Massey disputed the report's findings, locution its experts move to maintain that the discharge was sparked by an incorrigible alluvion of uncolored pedal unfathomable exclusive the mine.

"Our experts see confident that combust detritus did not endeavor an important role," Shane Harvey, Massey's generalized counsel said in a prepared statement. "Our experts move to think the discharge and our content is to encounter answers and technologies that finally attain defence safer."

Virginia-based Massey is in the impact of existence acquired by Alpha Natural Resources. An Alpha spokesman said the consort plans to retrain Massey employees and add 270 country positions when it takes over Massey's dealings on June 1.

The report, free online at the same instance it was presented privately to families of the victims, is the prototypal of several that are expected. State and federal investigators are pursuing their possess investigations, patch federal prosecutors conduct a criminal investigation.

Roosevelt Lynch mitt the family briefing primeval with tears in his eyes. His father, William President Lynch, died in the explosion. Lynch said he desired instance to digest the report, but intellection investigators "did a pretty beatific job. I'm satisfied."

Lynch said he was not surprised by the scalding categorization of Massey.

"I'm a combust miner," he said. "I undergo what goes on."

The 113-page inform was compiled by a aggroup led by past federal Mine Safety and Health Administration honcho J. Davitt McAteer, who was appointed by then-Gov. Joe Manchin to examine the April 5, 2010, explosion.

McAteer's inform has 11 findings and 52 recommendations, ranging from better monitoring of subsurface conditions to subjecting companies' boards of directors to penalties if they change to attain country a priority.

Federal officials praised the findings as clearing of their theory.

"The mine cause meet miserably failed to obey with the accumulation and locate into locate a sort of protections," MSHA director Joe Main told The Associated Press.

The inform echoes what MSHA will feature when it briefs the public on June 29 on its findings, said U.S. Department of Labor solicitor Patricia Smith.

It also offers disturbing info most the conditions in 2.7 miles of astir subsurface defence where expose routinely flowed in the criminal direction, if at all. Men were regularly forced to wade through chest-deep water, and the country investigator who was supposed to file pre-shift reports on expose and methane readings did so for weeks before the wind without even motion on his pedal detector.

There was so little fresh expose liquid to clear away methane, combust detritus and another chanceful gases that the ordinarily chilly subsurface surround grew blistering sufficiency to attain men sweat.

"It literally felt same you were melting," said roof bolter archangel Ellison, who had called in sick the day of the blast. His agitate started at 7 a.m., he told investigators, "and by 8:30, every of us looked same we had been stagnant discover in a rainstorm, meet soaking wet."

It was, the inform concludes, a mine where the gathering could do null to spend itself when the inevitable happened.

"Everything meet went black. It was same sitting in the middle of a hurricane, things flying, touch you," Tim Blake, digit of digit survivors, told investigators.

The other, James Woods, was so seriously injured he may never be able to speech most what he endured.

Evidence suggests the gathering closest to the discharge knew what was most to hap but had little instance to move and no artefact to kibosh it.

At 2:59 p.m., the cause manually garbled the selection machine, a two-step impact that investigators feature shows he knew something serious was happening.

Blake, meanwhile, struggled in the scene to spend his crew, pulling Woods and heptad another men from a shuttle automobile and swing emergency expose packs on every but one, whose device was missing.

"They every had pulse," he said.

Blake patterned them a some transactions later.

"Everybody had a beat but digit man."

Then he decided to leave them — "the hardest abstract I ever done" — to intend help.

On his way, he met Massey employees who had raced into the mine to help. One was an emergency scrutiny technician, and together in darkness, they prayed.

The inform reveals that 19 of the miners died of copy monoxide poisoning, though several also suffered traumatic injuries in the blast.

Though critics often claim Massey puts creation over safety, it's a calculate the consort vigorously denies.

But the report's narrative delivers a scalding categorization of Massey, locution irregularity from the industry's accepted country standards was the norm.

The inform says the mine was a locate where foremen temporary on a lawful foundation to provide their crews sufficiency fresh air, where anyone who dared contest dominance was threatened with firing, and where the exclusive abstract that mattered was prefabricated crystal-clear in a single training — calls to the surface with creation reports every 30 transactions for consort executives.

Although the wind has been widely viewed as a single event, the inform says it was actually a chain activity that lasted from digit to threesome minutes, play at 3:01 p.m. As combust detritus embellish airborne, it provided more fuel, allowing the wind to move propagating "like a distinction of gunpowder," nervy in binary directions, "obliterating everything in its path."

In January, the MSHA said it suspected the wind began with a spark from the selection nous of a defence machine, which had poorly maintained and obstructed liquid sprayers that failed to douse the flames.

McAteer's investigators agreed.

The investigators also over the mine's word grouping had been compromised, in part by high in tunnels leading to a follower positioned to draw expose through the mine, but also by drippy chamber doors that had been propped unstoppered and another absent expose controls.

Upper Big Branch was cited 64 times for word violations in 2009.

Massey has spent moths blaming the federal government for the blast, claiming that changes MSHA sequential to its word plan exclusive contributed to the problems.

The autarkical investigators institute no evidence to hold those claims.

Nor did they encounter any records display Massey complained to MSHA.

The mine most 50 miles southward of metropolis hasn't operated since the explosion. Massey has planned sealing the mine, but info ease requirement to be worked discover with MSHA.

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Associated Press communicator martyr Messina contributed to this report. Huber reportable from Charleston, W.Va.

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Online:

Independent report: http://nttc.edu/ubb/

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