West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training spokeswoman Jama Jarrett confirmed to International Longwall News that the incident Sunday afternoon local time took the life of Victor Goudy, 58, who had been an employee of the Marshall County longwall operation since the 1970s.

“We have investigators at the scene and that portion, at the least, of the mine is idle for investigation,” she said Monday afternoon, adding that it was too early to speculate if there would be any contributing violations.

US Mine Safety and Health Administration spokeswoman Amy Louviere told ILN the miner was caught between a locomotive and a flatcar or dolly when a second motor struck the trip of flatcars from the rear.

“The other locomotive was moving up to connect to the trip and struck the trip while the victim was in between the front locomotive and a flatcar,” she said.

“The victim was reportedly attempting to disconnect the drawbar on the flatcar when the accident occurred.”

Louviere confirmed that a 103k order was issued by federal officials to idle the operation, and that its district personnel were at the mine to commence its investigation.

While representatives for Consol did not return an ILN request for comment by press time, various local news outlets reported that the producer’s internal review of the incident had also begun.

McElroy, known as one of the nation’s largest underground operations, had not had a fatal operator injury since 2004 and reported an operator non fatal days lost (NFDL) rate of 2.55 last year, when it produced over 9.66 million tons of coal with 1.96 million operator hours worked.

Last Thursday, officials confirmed one worker died at Alliance Resource Partners’ Pattiki operation near Carmi, Illinois.

State and federal investigations have begun into the incident, which involved Tim Adamson, 45, being pinned between a continuous miner and the rib at about 2.30pm local time. Adamson was an eight-year veteran of the complex.

Pattiki is another larger-scale US operation; the 300-worker complex operated by ARLP subsidiary White County Coal produced about 2.8Mt in 2007. It had 14 NFDL operator injuries throughout last year on over 764,000 total man-hours, according to MSHA statistics.