Arch Coal receives Sentinels of Safety award

Arch Coal has announced that its ACI Hazard subsidiary earned the national Sentinels of Safety award for achieving the best 2012 safety record among the largest coal processing facilities in the US.

Washington award ceremony

The award ceremony took place in Washington, the US capitol, with the awards presented at a banquet. Atlas Copco, Draeger, Freeport-McMoRan and Nelson Brothers sponsored the event.

The award to ACI Hazard is the eighth Sentinels of Safety award earned by a subsidiary of Arch Coal since 2002.

President and CEO of Arch Coal, John W. Eaves, said of the award: “The best-in-class safety recognition was hard earned by our dedicated Hazard loading employees. This is a true safety excellence to accomplish a perfect safety rate for more than three years while shipping millions of tonnes of American coal.”

Zero incident rate

In 2012, Hazard employees at the company’s Kentucky River loading facility worked 184,859 hours with an incident rate of zero. The national average for safety incidents in the US is 1.39 incidents per 200,000 employee-hours among US coal processing facilities.

Greg Feltner, Hazard president and general manager, said the company was “Honoured to be recognised as the nation’s safest in our class. The dedicated employees at Hazard’s loading facility have operated safely for more than half a million employee-hours.

Sentinels of Safety

 The Sentinels of Safety awards programme is sponsored by the National Mining Association. Recipients of the prestigious award represent mining operations that have worked the most employee hours in each category without a lost-time incident. Six award winners are chosen from large and small coal operations in three category types, with a minimum of 4000 hours logged without a lost-time incident. A further 14 award categories exist for metal and non-metal operations.

The awards were first initiated in 1925, by the then-commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover.

NMA president and CEO, Hal Quinn, said the awards were set up to “Recognise the best of the best. To honour those whose commitment to their own safety – and to those around them – has resulted in a level of performance achieved by only 20 mining operations across the country.”

Adapted from press release by Sam Dodson

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/handling/01112013/arch_coal_receives_sentinels_of_safety_award_214/