MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration keeps inconsistent, incomplete records of the nation's coal mining accidents and appears to use them for documentation rather than to prevent accidents, college students studying a decade's worth of data have concluded.

Led by two professors and a retired MSHA inspector, 21 students at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon analyzed 381 fatal accident reports from 1995 to 2005 as part of an academic course this past spring. Their work was designed to assist state investigators in the Sago Mine probe.

Twelve men, mostly from towns near Buckhannon, died in the Jan. 2 blast and prolonged entrapment.

A total of 36 U.S. coal miners have died so far this year, compared with 22 last year.

The MSHA reports often lacked what the students considered critical information, including the age and experience levels of the miners, as well as their knowledge of the mines where they died. Nor did the reports use a consistent format or include consistent information, which the students' report said limits their usefulness in identifying patterns in accidents.

MSHA must adopt a uniform template and consistently report the same information if it wants the reports to serve as anything more than a record, history professor and project adviser Robert Rupp said Tuesday.

MSHA spokesman Dirk Fillpot said the agency would read the paper and consider the school's recommendations.

“MSHA professional accident investigators follow a strict procedure for determining the root cause of each mine accident through extensive review and analysis of all relevant information,” he said. “MSHA always welcomes input on how potential improvements could be made to the investigative process.”

The report found West Virginia and Kentucky mines were the most deadly, accounting for 56 percent of all deaths. Virginia was third with 10.3 percent, followed by Alabama with 8.4 percent and Pennsylvania with 7.4 percent.

Sixty-five percent of the deaths occurred in underground mines, with the rest at surface operations or preparation plants. While explosions with entrapment drew the most media attention, the report said most miners died one at a time, in accidents that drew little coverage.

The most deadly occupations were equipment operators, electricians and roof bolters, but the report said MSHA has too few job categories. That left 16 percent of all underground victims and 30 percent of all surface mine victims characterized only as “other.”

Almost 40 percent of the accidents were caused by miner error, while about 25 percent were caused by the owner's negligence or malfeasance. Another 12 percent were caused by what the students characterized as acts of nature. The remaining 23 percent covers a variety of things, including natural causes.

Because so much information was missing in the MSHA documents, the students could not identify patterns in some areas.

However, the fact that 16 percent of the mines had no history of violations “indicates that there is a problem with safety enforcement and follow-through in America's coal mines,” the report concluded. “Prevention of accidents through code enforcement does not appear to be a priority for either MSHA or the coal mining industry.”

The report recommends MSHA change its reporting system to:

-Include age, experience, training and other information about victims.

-Mention weather conditions the day before and the day of an accident, as well as any preceding holidays or work stoppages.

-Expand the mine profile to include the name and location of the coal seam, the number and type of air shafts, the number of employees and daily tonnage, and the date of the last MSHA safety inspection and any violations.

The report also determined that 12 percent of fatal accidents were reported within 15 minutes, as a federal law passed after Sago now requires. Nearly half the calls were made to MSHA within an hour, and 85 percent were made within two hours.

About one-quarter of the reports failed to note the timing of the call, and about 5 percent of the time, the students said, MSHA did not answer the phone.