3 men killed in Indiana mine accident

Authorities want answers to what caused three men to fall from a construction bucket inside a coal mine air shaft and plunge 500 feet to their deaths.

The trip in the open-top bucket Friday was routine, but the bucket was somehow upset as it was descending, said George Zugel, director of safety and health for Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc. The company is building the 550-foot vertical ventilation shaft at the Gibson County Coal mine in southern Indiana.

"I can't express enough these were more than co-workers, these were our very close personal friends," Zugel said. "It's terrible."

No other injuries were reported, and authorities said no one else was in the bucket. The "sinking bucket" can hold six to 10 people and is about 6 feet high, worker John Ervin said.

"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 were removed from the shaft within hours of the fall, though 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. The air shaft was being built as part of an expansion at the coal mine, which began production in July 2000.

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.

Several investigators from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration would be working to determine what caused the deaths, said David Whitcomb, assistant manager of the agency's Midwest district.

Officials from the Indiana Department of Labor and the Indiana Bureau of Mines also would be investigating, Labor Department spokesman Sean Keefer said.

The last fatality at the mine was in November 2001, according to federal records. 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.