3 men die in Indiana mine accident

Three men being carried in a construction bucket fell out and plunged 500 feet down an air shaft at a coal mine Friday, killing them, authorities said.

No one else was injured, said George Zugel, director of safety and health for Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc., which is building the 550-foot vertical ventilation shaft at the Gibson County Coal mine in southern Indiana.

The open-top bucket was somehow upset as it was descending in the shaft, and the three men fell to the bottom, Zugel said.

The "sinking bucket" can hold six to 10 people and is about 6 feet high, worker John Ervin said. Authorities did not say whether anyone other than the three victims was in the bucket.

"I don't understand how this could have happened," Ervin said.

At the start of a shift, the bucket typically takes about six people down to the work area at the bottom of the shaft, Ervin said. The bucket is inspected daily, he said.

The three bodies had been removed from the shaft, said Gibson County Sheriff Allen Harmon. The victims' names were being withheld until their families could be notified.

The mine, owned by Tulsa, Okla.-based Alliance Resource Partners, is about 30 miles north of Evansville.

Debbie King, executive assistant for investor relations at Alliance, said the accident was not connected to the mine.

"It is a construction accident. We can't report on it because it's not our accident," she said.

Officials from the Indiana Department of Labor and the Indiana Bureau of Mines are investigating at the mine, said Labor Department spokesman Sean Keefer.

The air shaft was being built as part of an expansion at the coal mine, which began production in July 2000. The last fatality was in November 2001, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. The miner died after being pinned by equipment, and operator error was cited as the cause.

Last year, the mine administration cited the company for 353 safety violations, 127 of which were deemed "serious or significant," said Rodney Brown, a spokesman for the agency. The mine has faced 292 citations this year, 84 of which were considered serious and significant.

In 2006, the company produced more than 3.5 million tons of coal, ranking second among the state's coal producers, according to the Indiana Coal Council.

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Associated Press writers Rick Callahan and Deanna Martin contributed to this story.