In the weeks before a roof fall killed a 26-year-old miner in Armstrong County’s Tracy Lynne Mine last year, the mine was being inspected by an industrial hygienist with virtually no underground mine experience.

The federal employee, Dennis Lowmaster, had briefly worked with a journeyman inspector at Tracy Lynne, but then the more experienced inspector was sent to a different mine.

Mr. Lowmaster, whose work background is computer programming, completed the mine inspection on his own, logging nearly 200 hours at the mine.

At the time, Mr. Lowmaster — who has never worked as a coal miner — says he told District 2 Mine Safety and Health Administration supervisors that he was not qualified to inspect mines, according to an affidavit he provided for the Department of Labor’s Inspector General.

“Before, during and after the mine inspection at Tracy Lynne Mine I told anyone who would listen that I did not feel comfortable conducting coal mine inspections because I did not have the proper training or experience,” Mr. Lowmaster said in the affidavit.

But he was told to continue, finishing the underground portion days before the fatal roof fall.

“He was doing the best he could at the time, but he wasn’t comfortable with it,” said John Savine, a recently retired inspector in District 2 who tried to help Mr. Lowmaster by showing him how to write citations.

“He didn’t really understand what he was doing. He didn’t understand what he was supposed to do.”

Boyd “B.J.” Beer Jr., was killed at 5:50 p.m. on June 10, 2005, while trying to secure the mine roof at Tracy Lynne’s No. 27 Room, one of two deaths in Pennsylvania underground mines last year.

Mr. Beer was installing a 6-foot bolt when a 5-foot-thick section of shale broke loose, crushing him. He had been on the job for 14 months, but had received his miner’s certificate — which allowed him to work by himself — only two months earlier.

Work sheets from the Tracy Lynne inspection obtained through the Freedom of Information Act do not indicate whether Mr. Lowmaster inspected the roof in the No. 27 room. Nor can anyone say conclusively that a more experienced inspector would have spotted the defect, which later reports said had caused the roof to sag.

But, four days after Mr. Beer’s death, another inspector cited mine operator Rosebud Mining for not following its approved roof control plan.

And six weeks after that, mine officials moved up plans to seal off that section of the mine after examiners said they could not travel to the deepest parts of the area “because of severe heaving conditions.”

When asked about Mr. Lowmaster’s qualifications, MSHA officials referred to an Oct. 19, 2006, letter from Coal Mine Safety and Health Deputy Administrator John Langton to Dennis O’Dell, who heads safety programs for the United Mine Workers of America.

Mr. Langton’s letter stated that Mr. Lowmaster had undergone in-house training before being sent to Tracy Lynne. It also said that the rooms where the roof fall occurred had not been started the last time Mr. Lowmaster was in that area.

Efforts to reach Mr. Lowmaster, who has transferred from the coal program to an industrial hygiene position in metal/non-metal, have been unsuccessful.

Earlier this week, though, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obtained a copy of the affidavit he provided for the inspector general’s office.

The IG’s office will not confirm any ongoing investigations, but a spokeswoman said yesterday that they are currently auditing MSHA’s inspection program. That report is scheduled for completion next year.

Mr. Savine said Mr. Lowmaster had come to MSHA from a job with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to do computer programming and perform noise and coal dust sampling in mines.

“He told MSHA that he didn’t want to be an underground mine inspector, but a couple of years ago they said he needed to start inspecting mines. We were a little short of personnel,” said Mr. Savine.

It’s a familiar refrain for many MSHA district offices which, by law, must inspect every underground mine in their jurisdiction four times each year, and every surface mine twice a year.

Sometimes that has meant a specialist, like Mr. Lowmaster, must take on additional inspection responsibilities.

“They are supposed to be able to do a regular inspection, but normally they don’t,” said Francis E. “Shorty” Wehr of St. Clairsville, Ohio, a retired inspector in northern West Virginia. “The guys have to sign off it, too. It’s all right, as long as nobody gets hurt.”

Because he had never worked underground, Mr. Lowmaster attended mine inspector training in 1998 to familiarize himself with the mining process. He never intended to become an inspector, though, so he spent only six days accompanying experienced inspectors into mines that year and he never saw a complete inspection.

In October 2004, he was told to conduct inspections at the Stitt Mine in Armstrong County, and Mine 84 in Washington County in early 2005. At Stitt, Mr. Lowmaster said he was with an experienced inspector for three days before being left with a checklist for completing the inspection himself.

In April, Mr. Lowmaster thought he was going to inspect Tracy Lynne with another experienced inspector, Robert Penigar, who later left MSHA to become safety director for Rosebud Mining.

But, after Mr. Penigar made introductions and helped him get set up, he was sent to another mine and Mr. Lowmaster found himself on his own again.

“I did not feel comfortable conducting the coal mine inspection at Tracy Lynne Mine myself but I felt I had no choice,” Mr. Lowmaster said in his affidavit.

On June 10, Mr. Lowmaster was already home after doing paperwork at Tracy Lynne when his wife told him of a news report that a miner had been killed.

“I was upset about the fatality and was concerned that I perhaps had done something or missed something that may have caused the fatality,” he said in the affidavit.

Mr. Lowmaster went on to say that a supervisor later assured him that he wasn’t responsible for Mr. Beer’s death.

Then, Mr. Lowmaster added, the supervisor “suggested that I stop making statements that I should not be inspecting mines and that I did not have enough training.”

But the doubts have not gone away. Earlier this year, Mr. Lowmaster reiterated his concern in a memo to a District 2 supervisor.

“While the investigative report of this accident found no liability on my part,” he wrote, “I will always wonder if this fatality could have been prevented if a qualified GS-1822 inspector had inspected the mine.”

In the final MSHA report, officials concluded that the fatal accident “occurred as a result of management’s failure to address the obvious defective roof condition which would have prompted additional safety precautions” where the roof fall occurred.

Two months after the incident, MSHA assessed Rosebud Mining $150,000 in penalties for roof control and preshift examinations violations. The company is appealing those fines.