Mining Publication: The ABCs of KSAs

What simple step can help to prevent a mine emergency from becoming a mine disaster? Preparation.

Mine emergencies can happen at any moment. Although all mines and mine emergencies are unique, being equipped with an easily adaptable set of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) can help underground coal miners prevent a dangerous situation from becoming a tragedy.

The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act) strengthened existing safety and health training regulations and introduced new measures aimed at improving emergency preparedness and response in underground coal mines. Although the MINER Act also required non-specified assessment of the self-escape KSAs of miners, there is no standard protocol dictating how to teach or evaluate these competencies.

Now more than 10 years later, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) expanded its research to answer these important questions:

• What are the critical self-escape competencies that all miners need in order to be prepared to respond to an emergency?
• In light of training regulations that are now a decade old, how confident are miners in their ability to self-escape in the event of an emergency?