Everyday Leadership: Meeting the smallest safety tasks is vital

One day while in the coal mine, we were forced to evacuate due to a mine fire. Later, we learned that a track haulage motor while carrying a piece of equipment had gotten caught against a piece of live trolley wire. The trolley breaker had been bypassed and the trolley wire started arcing and since the breaker didn’t cut the power, it caught the coal on fire. No one was hurt other than some smoke inhalation.

Once we were outside, we sat and rested in silence waiting to see if everyone else made it out. Suddenly, the mine foreman startled us by running down the concrete walkway and hollering, “I need six guys to carry in fire extinguishers back to the source of the fire.” Five other guys and I grabbed one each and got on the elevator. We ran as fast as we could with a 20-pound fire extinguisher bouncing on our hips. After about a half mile, we saw a pile of self-rescuers at the edge of the smoke.

I hollered into the smoke, “We’ve got fire extinguishers.”

I heard a mumbled voice but couldn’t understand it. Then, a sooted hand pierced the smoke and I placed a fire extinguisher in it. In a matter of seconds, the fire was out. Afterward, we were all taken to the hospital for chest X-rays to check for damage from smoke inhalation.

When we arrived back on the surface the second time, I heard a flurry of voices around the check board. A team was being formed to search the mine. A fairly new miner, Ben, who was slightly over 60 years old, had not moved his check on the board indicating he was still in the mine. Even at that advanced age, Ben had just begun his underground mining career, a very unusual occurrence. I assumed Ben was somebody’s father-in-law or uncle.

The shift foreman went to every man and asked, “Have you seen old Ben?” Ben was a belt shoveler so he worked by himself. No one had seen him. An exhaustive search was unsuccessful. As a last resort, the shift foreman decided to call Ben’s house and Ben answered the phone. This sequence of events resulted in the end of Ben’s short mining career.

Safety is everybody’s responsibility. In the chaos of the evacuation, Ben forgot to perform a vital task, moving his check from the in board to the out board. As a result, a team of miners was put in jeopardy to search for Ben. Leaders need to repeatedly emphasize even the smallest safety requirements because failure to meet the smallest safety rule could put others in harm’s way.

R. Glenn Ray is the president of RayCom Learning, which helps leaders who want to create an environment where people communicate clearly and choose to commit to organizational goals, and author of “You Can’t Push a Pig into a Truck: Everyday Leadership Lessons.” He can be reached at 1-888-574-5370, by e-mail rayray@raycomlearning.com, or online www.raycomlearning.com. Everyday Leadership appears each Wednesday on the Business page.