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A second man injured in a July 7 explosion at a Doddridge County drilling operation has died from burns and injuries he received at an Antero Resources drilling site.
Jason Mearns, 37, of Beverly died over the weekend at the West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh. according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office.
A Roane County man, Tommy Paxton, 45, of Walton, died on July 24 from injuries in the explosion.
Mearns and Paxton were among five workers burned in the incident.
Details related to the cause of the explosion are under investigation, and the WV-EAP ordered operations of the operation to be closed for now.
ORIGINAL STORY: WALTON MAN DIES FROM BURNS IN DODDRIDGE WELL EXPLOSION (July 25,2013)
A Walton, Roane County man has died from burns he experienced at an Antero Well explosion and fire in Doddridge County on July 7.
Tommy Paxton, 45, has died in the Pittsburgh Burn Center.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review first reported Paxton's death, saying the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office confirmed the death.
The drilling operation declined to release the names and general addresses of five men taken to the burn center following the explosion.
The state Department of Environmental Protection ordered Antero to cease operations at the site on July 12.
Antero says it is conducting an investigation of the incident, along with other government agencies.
A lawsuit was just settled in Harrison County against Antero Resources/Frontier Drilling for $12 million after an incident that left a worker paralyzed, claiming unsafe working conditions at a Salem WV worksite.
Joseph Davenport sued over the incident that occurred in May 2011 while he was trying to repair the drill on the rig, according to Charleston attorney Bobby Warner.
"They should've shut down the job and contacted a third party to come in and repair it. Obviously, that would have caused the job to be shut down and they're under pressure to keep things moving," Warner said.
"[Davenport] was directed by a supervisor to basically perform a very unsafe task in an attempt to fix the broken part of the drill."
The tools designed for the task were worn out and broken, according to the complaint filed in Harrison Circuit Court.
Davenport was diagnosed as a quadriplegic.
"Antero continues to have a very bad track record of having unsafe workplace conditions resulting in too many men being severely injured," Warner said.
In August, 2012, Antero had safety problems at an Antero-owned well in Harrison County that ignited methane gas several hundred feet underground, causing a fireball and a fire with three workers injured. DEP cited Antero for failure to maintain well control for that incident.
The DEP has cited Antero for 17 violations of state law in the past three years.
A violation on Jan. 4, 2013 warned, "Imminent danger water supplies threatened by allowing pollutants to escape and flow into the waters of the state."
In June 2012, Antero was drilling using water and accidentally re-pressurized some water wells, causing several geysers, one about 10 feet high, that flooded a home and several garages.
In March 2011, regulators shut down an Antero gas well in Harrison County after mud contaminated with drilling chemicals spilled into a nearby stream.
Antero Resources owns at least 399 wells in Doddridge, Harrison, Ritchie, Tyler and Upshur counties.
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