As Trump Promotes ‘Clean Beautiful Coal,’ a Lit Cigarette Above a West Virginia Coal Mine Leaves a Woman Fighting for Her Life

West Virginia regulators require methane remediation from a coal company following a blast that severely burned a woman in her home. 

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took to the White House podium to boost one of his favorite energy sources. 

“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful clean coal once and for all,” he said, as uniformed coal miners lined up behind him. “I tell my people never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful clean’ before it. … So we call it beautiful clean coal.”

As he spoke, a West Virginia woman was fighting for life after methane from a gassy coal mine likely seeped into her home and exploded—just three days before the president’s remarks. 

Coal miners and executives from Core Natural Resources, the owner of the mine below the woman’s home, were present for Trump’s announcement, according to local reports. 

In the aftermath of the blast, West Virginia mining regulators have ordered a Core subsidiary to temporarily stop extracting coal from at least part of its Leer Mine in Taylor County, about 100 miles south of Pittsburgh. 

The explosion occurred in the early morning of April 5, ignited by a cigarette lighter, in the rural community of Thornton. Thornton sits atop the Leer Mine, which Core has owned since its formation in January with the merger of Arch Resources and CONSOL Energy. 

The Office of the State Fire Marshal in West Virginia is conducting an investigation into the cause of the blast. However, state inspectors with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection visited the home on April 5, hours after the incident. They described it in a report as “an explosion” and said they detected methane in the home “at explosive levels.”

DEP then ordered the company to submit a revised permit for monitoring methane emissions. The agency prohibited further mining under homes where the coal seam is within 400 feet of the surface until the new permit has been approved, according to the order. The company, state regulators ordered, must “secure the property to prevent another occurrence and monitor methane levels.”

The explosion in West Virginia occurred less than three miles from where Jim and Melissa Nestor, another Thornton family, were evacuated in 2022 following warnings from a former top federal mine safety official, Jack Spadaro, about dangerous levels of methane inside and outside their home. It also follows the March 2024 explosion atop the Oak Grove Mine near Birmingham, Alabama, that killed a man and critically injured his grandson. 

The Alabama Surface Mining Commission, pressed by the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, finally acknowledged in January that the Oak Grove blast was “likely” caused by the ignition of methane, a gas produced when coal is mined. 

The agency’s move came after Inside Climate News published more than a dozen stories over the prior year on regulatory lapses or inaction by state and federal regulators there and in other coal states. 

The Alabama Surface Mining Commission ordered tighter monitoring of methane gas above coal mines in Alabama but has now delayed the order’s enforcement for another six months, a deadline more than a year and a half after the fatal blast.

She also tends a flock of chickens every morning, he said. Thomas described his wife, a retired social worker, as a person of strong Christian faith and said they both are relying on their faith now, as Kimberly struggles to recover.

Coal Company Was Warned About Methane

Mullens’ law firm, Mullens & Mullens, had warned Arch Resources and its subsidiary holding the permit for the Leer Mine, ICG Tygart Valley, of risks associated with methane leaking into homes in the Thornton area more than two years ago, after the evacuation of the Nestors following Spadaro’s warnings, Inside Climate News reported in 2023.

Mullens said Core, the current owner, has been working to address methane concerns on the Thomas property since the explosion. But Mullens said dozens of other homes nearby are also at risk and need action by the company. 

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection issued its “imminent harm cessation order” on the Leer Mine on April 7. Agency spokesman Terry Fletcher declined to comment because, he said, the incident was still under investigation. 

“We put the coal company on notice of these methane problems, and the methane obviously has not been abated,” Mullens said Thursday in an interview. “It is tragic that an explosion in someone’s home had to occur before serious action is taken by the coal company.”

He added, “We are currently working on getting methane monitors for other houses in the area. Our primary concern is to make the other houses in the area safe.”

Media representatives for Core did not return telephone and email messages requesting comment. 

Underground Mining Opens Large Cracks

At Leer, Core uses a controversial mechanized technique, longwall mining, designed to maximize the amount of coal it can extract. The metallurgical coal at that site is used to make steel and sold at a premium price. 

Rather than harvesting “rooms” of coal, leaving “pillars” of coal behind as support, longwall mining uses a large-bladed machine to shear off a slice of coal as wide as 1,200 to 1,500 feet that extends up to a mile in length. The rock ceiling, or “overburden,” is allowed to collapse behind the machine. 

The process can release methane and cause subsidence, or the sinking of the land above, which often damages surface structures like homes or businesses.

At the Thomas’ property, huge cracks in the ground a hundred feet or more in length and several feet wide opened up earlier this year, after mining passed underneath, Thomas said. 

The mining company filled those cracks. But others keep opening up.

“They were the largest cracks I’d ever seen,” Mullens said.

Methane can migrate to the surface through fissures or cracks created when underground rock between the coal seam and the surface settles. The mine owner had already installed a methane vent system near the Thomas’ water well, Mullens said. This week, following the explosion, the company was installing a second methane vent at the home, Mullens said.

The blast damaged a bathroom and a bedroom in the house, he said.

Mullens’ firm has represented more than two dozen families in the area, reaching settlements to cover damages caused by the Leer Mine.

In an affidavit filed in August 2022 in the Nestor case against Arch, Spadaro, a mining engineer with nearly 60 years of experience in mine safety, identified methane as a serious explosion risk in the area. He also noted that at high levels in homes, methane from mines can displace oxygen, resulting in asphyxiation.

“These conditions also persist through other areas of [Leer Mine] operations in Taylor County, West Virginia,” he wrote.

Mullens said his law firm has started its own investigation into the Thomas’ explosion, and he said he will be trying to get compensation for damage from subsidence and harm caused by the explosion—and will seek to “protect the public to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Empathy from an Alabamian Living On Top of a Mine

Coal helped turn the United States into a global economic and military power, but coal-fired power plants emit toxic air pollution and heat-trapping gases that are changing the world’s climate in dangerous ways. The methane that coal mining releases, meanwhile, is a super-pollutant that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period. Inside mines, methane also presents deadly explosion risks to miners if safety measures are not followed.

Contrary to Trump’s clean coal assertion during this week’s press conference, at which he announced four executive orders designed to boost coal mining and coal burning, coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

In its investigation last year, Inside Climate News found little evidence that the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement had used its oversight authority to ensure that states minimize damage from subsidence caused by active mines, protect people living atop mines from methane migration or make certain that compensation provisions are handled fairly. 

Nationally, the federal agency rarely intervened in state investigations through its process known as a “ten-day notice,” an option that can trigger formal federal inspections, according to records covering accidents from 2019 through mid-2024 obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Regarding the Leer Mine, an Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement spokesperson said the federal agency has offered “whatever resources or technical assistance” that West Virginia officials might request. OSMRE also said it was “evaluating” the Alabama mining agency’s “justification for the extension granted for Oak Grove’s permit revision.”

The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Trump describes coal as “beautiful” and “clean” when it poses significant health and environmental risks.

In Alabama, Inside Climate News found that residents have been raising their voices for decades about the risks of longwall mining and what it leaves in its wake: sinking homes and increased risks of an explosive gas seeping to the surface. Their concerns have largely fallen on deaf ears.

In Oak Grove, Alabama, Lisa Lindsay was the closest neighbor of W.M. Griffice, who died after the March 2024 methane explosion in his home. Lindsay felt the blast as it happened and watched the resulting flames rise above the Alabama pines. 

On Thursday, she told Inside Climate News that she empathized with the plight of the Thomas family in West Virginia. 

“I feel so bad for that person and the family,” she said. “A person should be able to light up a cigarette, candle, stove burner or fire in their home if they want to and not worry about blowing up.” 

Cover photo:  Lawyer Hunter Mullens is representing a retired couple after an explosion at their West Virginia house injured the wife, Kimberly Thomas. Credit: James Bruggers/Inside Climate News