Conveyor belts move coal from the working face out of the mine. They run on rollers under tension, they generate friction, and they are flammable. The belt in the Aracoma Alma No. 1 ignited that morning and began pouring dense smoke into the surrounding rooms. The mine's ventilation plan called for solid block walls, called stoppings, to separate the belt entry from the air intake — the passage that brought fresh air to working miners and that served as their primary escape route in an emergency. The Aracoma Alma Mine, on the morning of January 19, was missing two of those stoppings. Smoke from the belt fire flowed unobstructed into the air intake and turned the escape route into a death trap.

Aracoma happened in a brutal month for West Virginia coal mining. The Sago Mine disaster in Upshur County had killed twelve miners only nineteen days earlier, on January 2, 2006, and the country was already watching. The Aracoma Coal Company, which owned the mine, was a subsidiary of Massey Energy. Don Blankenship, the Mingo County native who ran Massey at the time, would later become one of the most prosecuted coal executives in American history — eventually convicted of conspiracy to violate safety standards after the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 miners. Aracoma's widows, Delorice Bragg and Freda Hatfield, became public voices in the years that followed.

On January 15, 2009, the Charleston Gazette reported that Delorice Bragg and Freda Hatfield had asked Federal District Judge John T. Copenhaver to reject Massey Energy's plea bargain. The $2.5 million criminal fine was, at the time, the largest ever for a mine safety violation. The widows believed it was not enough. Delorice Bragg stated plainly that Massey executives much farther up the line had expected the Alma Mine to emphasize production over the safety of the coal miners inside. Massey was also required to pay $1.7 million in civil fines. In 2010, four mine foremen — Michael Plumley, Donald Hagy Jr., Edward Ellis Jr., and Terry Shadd — pleaded guilty to failing to conduct the escapeway drills that federal regulations required, and were sentenced to a year of probation each.

On July 11, 2014, the Bragg and Hatfield families settled a Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit against the U.S. government for $1 million. The settlement included unusual nonmonetary terms. The Mine Safety and Health Administration agreed to create a course at the National Mine Safety and Health Academy on fire prevention in underground mines, with the Bragg and Hatfield families invited as honored guests on the first day of every class. The Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health would mention Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield in the opening remarks. MSHA also agreed to mount a plaque honoring the two men at the Firefighting Training Pad at the National Mine Academy. The plaque cannot bring them back. It can keep their names where the people learning to prevent the next fire have to read them.