{Oakwood, Virginia}...Virginia Department of Mines Minerals and Energy spokesman Mike Abbott says 44 year old Joe Saunders of Princeton, West Virginia died Wednesday at a hospital in Bristol, Tennessee after he and another miner were injured January 11th while working at CONSOL Energy's Buchanan No. 1 mine near Oakwood in Buchanan County, Virginia. Saunders was hit in the head by a piece of a high-pressure water line valve that blew off and broke. The other miner suffered minor injuries. It's the nation's
first coal mining fatality of the year.
