Blacksville Mine work continues
Consol Energy mine rescue teams worked Tuesday at the Blacksville No. 2 Mine to prepare for the installation of final permanent seals to isolate an area of the mine where a fire broke out three weeks ago.
The company still doesn’t know when the mine will be able to resume production, it said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Consol’s advance teams installed permanent stoppings at the seal sites and sampling lines for the permanent seals, company spokeswoman Lynn Seay said in an email.
The company continues to pump water from the mine to maintain a water level that allows the advance teams to travel underground by rail to the Orndoff shaft site and prepare for installation of the permanent seals, she said.
The company also continues to inject nitrogen into two boreholes from the surface and planned to begin injecting it into a third borehole Wednesday afternoon. Nitrogen helps deplete oxygen in the affected area of the mine.
On Wednesday morning, Consol received approval from state and federal agencies and the United Mine Workers to examine other sections of the mine. West Virginia certified mine examiners entered the mine Wednesday morning, Seay said. These sections have been normally ventilated since the fire started.
Consol teams are on-site around the clock to continue monitoring gas levels, which remain steady, Seay said.
The fire was discovered March 12 when smoke was detected coming from the mine’s Orndoff shaft in Wayne Township. All 121 underground employees were safely evacuated from the Kuhntown portal off Oak Forest Road.
The company began pumping water into the mine through an existing borehole and drilled a number of other boreholes from the surface to pump water and inject nitrogen underground into the affected area and to monitor the mine atmosphere.
Additional boreholes were drilled to construct “isolation walls” around the affected area to seal it off from the rest of the mine. Mine rescue teams were first able to re-enter the mine last Wednesday.