On the side of the highway in Montcoal, West Virginia a tall rusted steel trestle rises far above the road. At its base, 29 crimson crosses are adorned with shiny black helmets alongside sun-bleached photos of the miners who lost their lives in the deadliest mine explosion of the last 50 years.
It’s quiet there, at the entrance to the Upper Big Branch mine except for the occasional dump truck that lumbers by, belching exhaust with a belly full of coal.
“Not a day goes by that it don't cross my mind,” said Stanley “Goose” Stewart. He’s one of two survivors, who saved himself by racing towards the mine entrance amid hurricane force winds and flying debris.
“I still have occasional nightmares,” Stewart said. “Every time I seem to think I’m over them, the next thing I know is: ‘Wake up Stanley, wake up, you’re home you’re okay.’”
On the day of the explosion, Stewart recalls frantically performing CPR on his friends once rescue teams extricated them from the mine, like the tons of coal extracted before their bodies.
“They smelled like dynamite…and their faces were black: nostrils mouths just filled with black soot. You're working on them, and you know that they're gone, but you hope…maybe…,” Stewart trailed off.
The mine’s operator was found guilty of conspiring to violate safety laws. Investigations concluded the federal agency that was supposed to police them was understaffed and didn’t aggressively enforce safety laws.
Today, Stewart fears it will happen again.
He and other whistleblowers say the Trump administration’s cuts to staff at the Mine Safety and Health Administration are setting the stage for another deadly disaster. It comes as the number of miners in the nation is increasing — both in coal and precious minerals — and Trump himself is promising to use more coal on social media and writing policies to boost mineral production. The cuts won’t just affect coal mines. MSHA regulates everything from gravel quarries to lithium, all minerals which go into products people use every day.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s appropriation from Congress has stayed relatively flat for decades. Agency insiders say it struggles to keep up with inflation, standard raises and cost of living allowances.
Mine safety inspectors say they can barely keep up with the routine “twos and fours” inspections — quarterly inspections at underground mines, and six month inspections at surface mines — much less target bad actors. When they find violations, inspectors can issue stiff penalties to mine companies or even force mines to close until problems have been fixed.
One recent report from the Department of Labor’s inspector general found that MSHA wasn’t performing routine inspections in at least three U.S. territories.
“That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. We don't have time for anything else,” said Carey Clarkson, who represents Department of Labor workers for the American Federation of Government Employees.
And that was before Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) came along to downsize the federal government.
AFGE says they know of around 120 employees at MSHA who accepted the sweeping “fork in the road” buyout offer, or, about 7% of the small agency’s full-time workforce. Another 90 who were set to be hired, had job offers rescinded after President Trump was inaugurated, according to the union organization.
“On January 21, we lost 90 people in MSHA that we desperately needed. We could justify that we needed them,” Clarkson said. “I mean, out of the 120 [who resigned] I can't imagine how many years of experience we've lost.”
DOGE has also posted on its website’s “Wall of Receipts” that it’s terminating leases for dozens of mine safety offices across the country. Clarkson says the union asked Department of Labor officials in Washington D.C. what that means for staff, but to him, it’s apparent labor officials weren’t part of that decision.
“You ask the questions, are you all going to let these people transfer to another office... Or are you going to terminate these employees? And there's no response,” Clarkson said. “It's scary times.”
Joe Main was early in his tenure as the head of the mine safety agency when the Upper Big Branch mine disaster happened. He says he inherited an understaffed and inexperienced workforce then.
“It don't take a rocket scientist to figure out we're on a similar path, but on steroids right now,” Main said.
Main is concerned by the apparent lack of pushback from elected representatives, some of them are the very same people who grilled him in congressional hearings after the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine.
“The silence is just scary,” Main said. “They're not just asking questions, poking what the heck's going on here on behalf of the miners and their families.”
The number of mine workers has increased in recent years, especially in mines that produce minerals. While coal production jobs are still nowhere near as high as a decade ago, they’re increasing too. More workers mean more people to protect.
Back at his home, Stewart says that leaves miners vulnerable.
“These guys, it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be real tough,” Stewart said. “I’ll tell you, right now, I wouldn't want to be in a coal mine.”
