Hutchinson ? A Barton County business owner who drowned in January after falling into a water-filled sandpit marked the first fatality in five years in Kansas’ mining industry, officials say.

Robert Deines, 64, of Hoisington, wasn’t wearing a flotation jacket when he fell from a platform at Dartmouth Sand & Gravel, the business he owned about 5 miles east of Great Bend.

But Deines had attended several training courses through the Kansas Small Mine and Small Business Safety program at Hutchinson Community College.

The only one of its kind in the state, the Hutchinson program offers training required for anyone working around surface or underground mines.

Speaking recently to a class of contractors, welders, electricians and even employees from the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, instructor Ken Dobrinski recalled Deines as a friendly businessman who had trouble wearing a life jacket since losing his left arm several years ago in an accident.

No one knew how or why Deines, who worked more than 25 years in the industry, fell from the platform into the water, Dobrinski said.

But the accident reinforces the importance of training and safe practices, said Amy Louviere, a spokeswoman for the Mine Safety and Health Administration under the U.S. Department of Labor.

Since 1997, there have been eight mining fatalities in Kansas, Louviere said. Deines’ death was the first mining fatality in the nation in 2008.

Dobrinksi told students in his eight-hour training “refresher class” that MSHA inspectors would likely assess the circumstances surrounding Deines’ death and strictly enforce certain regulations in Kansas, including wearing a personal flotation device near water.

MSHA officials have already done so, Louviere noted, and a list of “best practices” necessary in a situation like Deines’ is available on its Web site, www.msha.gov.

Those include:

¢ Always wear a life jacket if there is a danger of falling into water;

¢ Set up a communication schedule with others when persons work alone; and

¢ Ensure a dredge has proper handrails to prevent someone from falling.

In a slideshow presentation, Dobrinski carefully went over every mining fatality from 2007 and explained to students how to avoid such accidents.

“In 2007, five people died from slipping and falling,” he noted. “There could be inadequate walkways or scaffolds, they weren’t using fall protection equipment or they might not have been anchored – always assess and control risks.”

Not many people realize it, Dobrinski said, but any area of ground that’s been dug in a business can be considered a mine.

There are 250 mines in Kansas, and only about 12 of those are considered underground, like the salt museum, he said. The rest are surface mines, including mining for minerals and sandpits.

If you set foot near a mining site, Dobrinski warned, you’d better have taken the safety training mandated by the government.

“Even contractors who spend time at a mine site, if an inspector asks you if you’ve had safety training and you haven’t, they can order you off the site,” he said.