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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Nearly 17 months after the Sago Mine explosion, the nation's highest profile mine disaster in a generation continues to change the industry.
Federal regulators are poised to upend a decades old practice of sealing and forgetting abandoned mine sections following their conclusion that lightning sparked methane in a sealed section of the Sago.
Some 177 underground mines in West Virginia, the nation's No. 1 underground coal producer, are preparing to buy airtight refuge chambers and wireless communications and tracking gear, which help rescue miners trapped underground. Eleven of the 12 men killed at Sago died after an extended entrapment.
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