Site of Fatal Accident : Acton Mine Owner Fined $60,000

The operators of an Acton gold mine where a miner fell to his death last October have been fined $60,000 by state officials who said that compliance with earlier state citations might have prevented the death.

The fines levied against Pac West Development Co. of Palmdale resulted from a January investigation of the Governor Mine that found six “serious and willful” violations of state mine-safety regulations, said Vern Larson, a senior engineer for the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The most serious of the violations involved failures to adequately ventilate the mine and provide an improved emergency rescue plan, two deficiencies Pac West was cited for and told to correct after a September inspection that uncovered 10 other violations, Larson said.

“They not only didn’t correct them; they diametrically opposed them” by sending men to work in the mine without improving the deficiencies, Larson said.

A lack of sufficient oxygen was blamed for the death of Roy Madsen, a 42-year-old mine superintendent who was collecting ore samples from 130 to 200 feet below the mine’s entrance when he reportedly descended into a pocket of “bad air,” passed out and fell from a narrow ledge.

Rescuers attempting to get at Madsen’s body 240 feet below ground were driven back when fresh air being pumped into the mine dried out damp soil and caused some of the timbers supporting the tunnel to shift, Larson said, making the mine too dangerous for further rescue attempts.

The Governor Mine has been sealed by the state since the accident.

Allen Herron, president of Pac West, said he will appeal the fines to Cal-OSHA officials, alleging that he received the September citations and notice of a $625 fine accompanying them only three weeks ago. He said that until then, he was unaware of improvements the state wanted made in the mine.

Herron said he gave state officials a guided tour through the mine a month before the accident and submitted to them detailed plans of what his workers, including Madsen, would be doing in the mine.

“I never heard anything from them about improvements,” Herron said. “Now there is the accident, and I think the state is trying to make a big deal out of this as a warning to others.”

Madsen’s death, he said, should not be attributed to poor conditions in the mine, but instead to Madsen’s failure to follow safety procedures. Investigators determined that the miner had taken off his oxygen mask and safety rope just before falling.

Pac West still faces federal fines resulting from a December investigation that cited the mine operators for violating two federal mine-safety laws. Although investigators found violations of both state regulations and federal law, no evidence of criminal violations was found.

The Governor Mine was opened in 1882 and became Southern California’s most productive gold mine, yielding more than $1.5 million in gold before it closed in 1942. Pac West bought the mine and a year ago began preparing it for production.

Since its reopening, federal and state investigators had inspected it four times, each time finding “minor violations,” said Jerald Drussel, a federal safety investigator.

Herron said that he has been doing his best to comply with government citations.

“You can’t walk into a mine and make it perfect,” Herron said. “But you can work on it to make it as safe as possible. That’s what we’ve been doing.”

Herron said that later this week he will present to state and federal authorities a detailed plan to improve and reopen the mine. He said he plans to abandon older shafts at the bottom of the mine and replace them with new tunnels.