Hendersonville Man, 69, Indicted Over Cover-Up of Deadly Illinois Mine Fire

A 69-year-old Hendersonville, Tennessee man is among four former mine managers and supervisors indicted on federal charges alleging they failed to evacuate miners and then covered up an underground coal mine fire at an Illinois facility in August 2021. Ronald Dale Koontz faces the charges alongside Demitrios George Macropoulos of Arizona, Randy L. Nowland of Illinois, and Cory Taylor Humphrey of Kentucky.

According to WZTV, the fire broke out on August 13, 2021, at the MC#1 Mine in Franklin County, Illinois, while workers were using cutting torches to remove collapsed steel beams underground. Indictment documents reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice describe Koontz as general manager of an oversight company for the mine operator, Macropoulos as mine superintendent, and Nowland and Humphrey as shift mine managers — a hierarchy prosecutors say established direct operational responsibility for each defendant.

Federal prosecutors allege the defendants chose not to notify the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration or evacuate miners after the blaze could not be extinguished within 10 minutes of discovery. Under federal safety standards established in 2006, operators are legally required to notify MSHA and activate an emergency evacuation plan the moment an underground coal fire passes that threshold, according to the Federal Register. Instead, coal extraction reportedly continued for all or parts of three shifts while supervisors attempted ad hoc firefighting.

Miners Kept Working as Carbon Monoxide Alarms Sounded

During that stretch, gas detectors carried by miners repeatedly alarmed for carbon monoxide levels exceeding 10 parts per million — a toxic byproduct of fire that can displace oxygen and cause fatal asphyxiation — yet mining continued, the Department of Justice said in an August 2025 announcement. The department alleges the four men were accused of conspiring to hide the fire and other hazards from MSHA and of interfering with the agency's subsequent investigation.

On August 14, 2021, an anonymous tip alerted MSHA to the fire, and federal inspectors confirmed it and ordered the mine evacuated that same day. Prosecutors say mine managers evacuated hourly miners under the false pretense that a coal transport belt was broken, after which conspirators re-entered the mine without wearing required personnel-tracking devices — equipment legally mandated underground so rescue teams can locate personnel in an emergency — to keep fighting the fire.

Koontz and Macropoulos allegedly entered the mine after federal inspectors had already ordered miners to evacuate, and members of the alleged conspiracy later re-entered the mine again despite the federal evacuation order, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say members of the group manipulated underground conditions to influence gas detector readings, after which mining resumed. Koontz and Macropoulos were separately charged with obstructing an MSHA proceeding, and prosecutors allege Koontz directed another supervisor to delete a phone record relevant to the investigation.

Falsified Logs and a Guilty Plea From a Former Manager

Nowland and Humphrey are separately accused of falsifying required mine examination records and certifying that there were no hazardous conditions underground, federal prosecutors said. Those hazard inspection logs are key regulatory tools federal inspectors rely on to monitor underground safety conditions in real time.

The case against the four men builds on ground already covered in court. Former MC#1 mine manager Timothy Brandon Parsons, 38, of Louisa, Kentucky, pleaded guilty in 2025 to federal conspiracy to defraud MSHA over the same 2021 fire, and he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, per the Justice Department's announcement. All four newly indicted defendants could face prison time if convicted.

A Mine at the Center of Environmental and Financial Fallout

The MC#1 Mine sits within the Sugar Camp Energy mining complex owned by Foresight Energy, which in 2018 produced 14.4 million tons of coal, making it the largest coal mine in Illinois and the sixth-largest in the nation, according to the Prairie Rivers Network. The scale of that operation helps explain why prosecutors say production pressure factored into the alleged decisions to keep mining through the fire.

The 2021 fire's aftermath has also spilled into civil court. In January 2022, the Illinois Attorney General sued Sugar Camp Energy after mine operators pumped 46,000 gallons of firefighting foam containing toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” underground during the blaze, which the state says led to contaminated surface runoff and livestock deaths on nearby farms. The following year, parent company Foresight Energy filed a federal lawsuit against its insurers seeking more than $106 million in losses tied to MSHA-mandated closures stemming from 2021 underground fires at both its Sugar Camp and Hillsboro mining complexes, according to KSDK.