Thursday, January 05, 2006
Were the Deaths of the 12 Coal Miners Preventable? A Look At the History of Safety Violations at the Sago Mine
Democracy Now
Late Tuesday night, the company that owns the mine, International Coal Group, announced that 12 of the miners had been found alive. Family members and friends who had gathered in a local church heard the news from the rescue command center and celebrated with cheering and singing for almost three hours.
Then early Wednesday morning the CEO of ICG, Ben Hatfield, announced that actually only one miner, Randy McCloy, had survived the blast. After the announcement, chaos broke out at the Sago Baptist church and the devastated families grew increasingly angry after it emerged that mine officials had known within 45 minutes that original reports of the miners" survival might have been false, but they had waited to tell the families. A fight broke out inside the church and a mining company official had to be escorted away under police protection.
The deaths of the 12 miners this week at Sago mine highlighted ongoing safety problems. Last year alone Sago mine was cited for over 200 health and safety violations. Inspectors found 16 violations in the past 8 months that were listed as "unwarrantable failures."
Sago mine was forced to suspend operations 16 times in 2005 after failing to comply with safety rules. The violations found at Sago included mine roofs that collapsed without warning, faulty tunnel supports and a dangerous build-up of flammable coal dust. But the fines that the company were required to pay were extremely low, most of them $250 or $60 dollars.
Government documents also show a high rate of accidents at Sago. 42 workers and contractors have been injured in accidents since 2000 and the average number of working days lost because of accidents in the past five years was nearly double the national average for underground coal mines.
Ken Ward Jr., staff writer for West Virginia's Charleston Gazette and investigative reporter who wrote an award-winning series of articles about coal-industry abuses in West Virginia, revealed that state regulators routinely ignore the law when they issue mountaintop removal permits.
Ward also related that a rather startling thing that happened. All of the information is being disseminated by the company. And, one of our reporters, Scott Finn, asked about this at a press conference yesterday. He questioned,“Who's in charge of relaying information here?” And the company said, “Well, we're in charge.” And that's clearly not the expectation under the Mine Safety and Health Act. When something like this happens at a mine, a serious accident, where there are conditions that could cause further injuries to people, what happens is MSHA inspectors get there, and they issue what's called a “K-order,” which gives them control of the site. And nothing can happen at that site without MSHA approval. And one of the things that historically MSHA has always done is played a very active role, if not the role, in disseminating information.
But it's really nothing new for this particular administration at MSHA that has had a long history in their time in office of trying to throw stumbling blocks and hurdles at reporters trying to learn about what MSHA’s doing.
MSHA right now is an agency that doesn't have a permanent director. The director of MSHA is typically an assistant secretary of labor. The last one was a guy named Dave Lauriski, who for 30 years was a mine company employee. President Bush has nominated someone new named Richard Stickler to take that role. There have been no confirmation hearings scheduled for him. Mr. Stickler has a rather questionable sort of past. When he was being nominated to run Pennsylvania's mine safety agency, the United Mine Workers Union opposed him getting that job, because some of the Bethlehem Steel Mining operations which he managed had poor safety records.
(Editor's note ... Shades of Katrina!)
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Democracy Now
Late Tuesday night, the company that owns the mine, International Coal Group, announced that 12 of the miners had been found alive. Family members and friends who had gathered in a local church heard the news from the rescue command center and celebrated with cheering and singing for almost three hours.
Then early Wednesday morning the CEO of ICG, Ben Hatfield, announced that actually only one miner, Randy McCloy, had survived the blast. After the announcement, chaos broke out at the Sago Baptist church and the devastated families grew increasingly angry after it emerged that mine officials had known within 45 minutes that original reports of the miners" survival might have been false, but they had waited to tell the families. A fight broke out inside the church and a mining company official had to be escorted away under police protection.
The deaths of the 12 miners this week at Sago mine highlighted ongoing safety problems. Last year alone Sago mine was cited for over 200 health and safety violations. Inspectors found 16 violations in the past 8 months that were listed as "unwarrantable failures."
Sago mine was forced to suspend operations 16 times in 2005 after failing to comply with safety rules. The violations found at Sago included mine roofs that collapsed without warning, faulty tunnel supports and a dangerous build-up of flammable coal dust. But the fines that the company were required to pay were extremely low, most of them $250 or $60 dollars.
Government documents also show a high rate of accidents at Sago. 42 workers and contractors have been injured in accidents since 2000 and the average number of working days lost because of accidents in the past five years was nearly double the national average for underground coal mines.
Ken Ward Jr., staff writer for West Virginia's Charleston Gazette and investigative reporter who wrote an award-winning series of articles about coal-industry abuses in West Virginia, revealed that state regulators routinely ignore the law when they issue mountaintop removal permits.
Ward also related that a rather startling thing that happened. All of the information is being disseminated by the company. And, one of our reporters, Scott Finn, asked about this at a press conference yesterday. He questioned,“Who's in charge of relaying information here?” And the company said, “Well, we're in charge.” And that's clearly not the expectation under the Mine Safety and Health Act. When something like this happens at a mine, a serious accident, where there are conditions that could cause further injuries to people, what happens is MSHA inspectors get there, and they issue what's called a “K-order,” which gives them control of the site. And nothing can happen at that site without MSHA approval. And one of the things that historically MSHA has always done is played a very active role, if not the role, in disseminating information.
But it's really nothing new for this particular administration at MSHA that has had a long history in their time in office of trying to throw stumbling blocks and hurdles at reporters trying to learn about what MSHA’s doing.
MSHA right now is an agency that doesn't have a permanent director. The director of MSHA is typically an assistant secretary of labor. The last one was a guy named Dave Lauriski, who for 30 years was a mine company employee. President Bush has nominated someone new named Richard Stickler to take that role. There have been no confirmation hearings scheduled for him. Mr. Stickler has a rather questionable sort of past. When he was being nominated to run Pennsylvania's mine safety agency, the United Mine Workers Union opposed him getting that job, because some of the Bethlehem Steel Mining operations which he managed had poor safety records.
(Editor's note ... Shades of Katrina!)
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