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Sad news about the W. Va. Miners

Went to bed last night with such a feeling of elation when I heard that 12 of the Coal Miners trapped in an explosion were OK. Woke up this morning to the tragic news that that report had been a mis-communication and that only one man is alive and that he is in critical condition. From a report in today's LA Times:

Ben Hatfield, president of the International Coal Group, told the families gathered at the Sago Baptist Church that "there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived," said John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners.

At that point, chaos broke out in the church and a fight started.

Hatfield said the erroneous information spread rapidly when people overheard cell phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command center. In reality, rescuers had confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs, he said.

"The initial report from the rescue team to the command center indicated multiple survivors," Hatfield said during a news conference. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center. It quickly got out of control."

Hatfield said the company waited to correct the information until it knew more about the rescue.

The article also cited concern over safety problems at the mine:

ICG finalized its purchase of the Sago Mine last fall, buying the operations from the Anker West Virginia Mining Co., which had gone bankrupt. Anker had owned the mine since April 2001, acquiring it from a local contract miner.

The contract miner had in turn bought the mine two years earlier from Anker.

The mine's federal health and safety violations had nearly doubled over the last year, rising from 68 citations in 2004 to 181 in 2005. Nearly half of the 2005 totals were deemed "significant and substantial," the government's term for serious mine safety problems. The deficiencies included problems with the firm's ventilation and roof support plans.

At least 46 federal violations had been cited since October. And records from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration indicated that at least a dozen roof collapses occurred in the last six months.

In addition, Terry Farley, a West Virginia mine safety official, confirmed that the Sago Mine was also cited by state regulators for 208 violations in 2005, up from 74 the year before.

Mine safety experts said that the sudden rise in safety problems should have alarmed ICG when it was preparing to buy the mine.

"That's a significant number for a mine that size," said Kenneth P. Katen, a former deputy assistant Labor secretary for the mine agency under the Reagan administration. "If you have a sudden increase of violations, that's something that should have drawn the new owners' attention."

So in five years, Anker West went from being able to purchase a coal mine to bankruptcy. This gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling when I think about the money they must have been pouring into daily operations for safety equipment and proceedures... Maybe something good will come of this disaster and there will be a greater watchfulness on the part of the owners and operators. Posted by DaveH at January 4, 2006 10:19 AM