Kentucky Coal-Mining Deaths at Record Low in 2018

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration says coal-mining related deaths have reached a record low in Kentucky where a single miner died last year.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports the agency said Jan. 8 that there were 12 deaths at coal mines nationwide in 2018. Federal records and investigators say 29-year-old Hubert Grubbs Jr. died in March when he was caught in an underground conveyor belt at a mine near Cumberland.

The agency says there were 27 fatalities nationwide at all mines in 2018, including those at facilities such as rock quarries. It says that is the second-lowest number of mining deaths ever.

Forty-eight mining deaths were recorded nationwide in 2010 when 29 people died in a West Virginia mine explosion. In 2016, there was a low of eight coal-mining deaths.