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Miners Brushing Up on Safety in Mine Tour

SCRANTON — The Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour in Scranton is a few weeks away from opening for the season, and on Wednesday, it really looked like an ac...

SCRANTON -- The Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour in Scranton is a few weeks away from opening for the season, and on Wednesday, it really looked like an active coal mine.

Miners who work in one of the 10 remaining anthracite mines in the state visited the coal mine tour in McDade Park and used it as their own training facility, practicing for any array of dangers inside an active coal mine. But if there was ever an incident during a tour, those miners would be the ones answering the call.

The people inside Lackawanna County's coal mine tour Wednesday were far from tourists. Coal mining is the life they live and the site hundreds of feet below McDade Park in Scranton felt a lot less like a tour and much more like a real coal mine.

Members of the Department of Environmental Protection's mine safety rescue team treated training like a competition. Teams were judged on their success in rescuing people facing several different obstacles.

"Because you never know when an accident, unfortunately, could happen in a mine, so we want our rescuers to be prepared to go down and understand the obstacles that the face -- high levels of carbon monoxide, methane, there could be a fire down there as there was in the simulation today," explained DEP official Colleen Connolly.

The fire wasn't real, but they're preparing for when it might be or how they would handle injuries or toxic gas.

This is the first time the DEP's Bureau of Deep Mine Safety has held a training session inside Lackawanna County's coal mine tour and officials say it will provide an added benefit for the 30,000 or so people who visit the mine each season.

"Should there ever come a situation where we need the mine rescue team here, they would be aware of how the mine is set up and how it works. It would be a good thing for our benefit, as well as theirs," said coal mine tour superintendent Bob Lucas.

Up on the surface, coal mine tour employees are preparing for the upcoming season. The mine tour opens on April 1, but on this day, they saw it in a whole new light--or in this case--dark.

"It's surreal, to be down there and see what they're doing, as far as, with the smoke and with the lights being off, you don't normally see that sort of thing," said Bill Davis, Lackawanna County Parks.

The DEP says they'll plan to do more training like the one held on Wednesday.

The Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour was recently named a finalist in USA Today's picks of best underground attractions in the country. You can find a link to vote here.

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