Ex-Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship will face charges for the April, 2010 explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine that killed 29 miners.
“The worst mining disaster in decades, the methane-fueled blast killed miners over a mile away,” Climate Progress notes. The indictment charges Blankenship with “causing routine, wilful violations of mandatory federal mine safety and health standards,” according to a notice to families reported in the Charleston Gazette.
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“Blankenship refused to participate in the official state and federal investigations into the disaster, choosing instead to invoke the Fifth Amendment,” Phillips writes.
