Blast in Centralia No. 5, in Stillman, PA Term Paper

Blast in Centralia No. 5, in Stillman, PA - Term Paper Example Driscoll Scanlan, who was the mine inspector of the district in which Centralia Mine no.5 is in, conducted inspections, collecting data and recording them; on the basis of the results, he wrote the reports. In his reports, Scanlan noted that the mine was at high risk of exploding due to the buildup of coal dust. He sent his reports to Mr. Robert Weir who was assistant and director for the Department of minerals and mines in the state of Illinois. Mr. Weir provided recommendations and requested for the company’s response, on the condition of the roadways which were dusty, dirty and dangerous. The mine superintendent, Norman Prudent, said they were going to spray the roads in a week’s time (Martin, 1948). Scanlan’s recommendation was that the mine be cleaned up or shut down. Other logistical alternatives, which he would have addressed, are safe rescue methods, self-escape strategy in case of an emergency incident command and coal dust effects on the health of miners (Murray, 2000). He could have focused on the mine rescue team. If the team has specialized equipments, it is capable of rapid, state of art and safe rescue in the irreparable mine environment. This has a wide variation of functionality between team individual capabilities, and the team at Centralia no.5 had ill equipments to handle the disaster (Martin, 1948). Well trained miners who have up to date equipments and are capable of timely self escape under pressure and hazardous atmospheres could have acted first and helped their colleagues. This could have helped in reducing the number of causalities. We recall that there was a recommendation made to the company to install sprinklers in the mine. This proposal fell on a deaf ear. The sprinklers were of importance to emergency response systems because after detection of smoke, they could have sprayed water and this could have warned the miners. Installation of alarm is of paramount