Sago Disaster Investigation-- a Colorado Connection
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Categories: Economic Fairness & Security, Effective & Ethical Government, Consumer and Worker Protection, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights
Categories: Economic Fairness & Security, Effective & Ethical Government, Consumer and Worker Protection, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights
Is a Bush administration official offering a phony Colorado excuse?
Or could this little-noted excuse be true, yet reveal something of significance about the administration's values?
The story was reported in the West Virginia Charleston-Gazette:
But what is the real urgency with the West Elk Mine?
When i Google "West Elk Mine" and "Colorado," i encounter a series of news articles from January 3 and January 4. A few brief excerpts tell the story:
So the fire was out weeks ago. They were already making plans to re-open the mine. And as this goes to the web, Google doesn't reveal any other mine fires in Colorado making the news. (There are numerous decades-old coal mine fires smouldering around the state, but apparently none worthy of media attention.)
The news stories from January 3 and 4 don't indicate any serious safety issues at the mine, and there aren't any more recent stories about a Colorado mine fire in the news that i could find. Now, absence of news articles isn't proof of no existing mine fire in Colorado, but it is powerfully suggestive. It appears that the great emergency is a need for the nation's second largest coal company to get Mine Safety and Health Administration clearance to ramp up production at the West Elk Mine.
What are the implications? Could it be that acting MSHA chief David G. Dye, one of the nation's foremost safety officials, is more concerned about production and corporate profits from a Colorado mine than about safety issues being addressed in the United States Senate?
At least one writer seems to see a pattern. Ruth Marcus writes in the Washington Post that walking out of the hearing:
The columnist concludes,
Maybe the media is awakening just a bit, as well.
Or could this little-noted excuse be true, yet reveal something of significance about the administration's values?
The story was reported in the West Virginia Charleston-Gazette:
[Senator] Byrd also used the meeting to "dress down" acting MSHA chief David G. Dye for leaving in the middle of a Monday Senate hearing on mine safety, Rockefeller said. [...]
Byrd said Dye's departure was a "gross error" and a "very arrogant thing for him to do," especially after subcommittee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., specifically asked him not to leave.
"They don't want to answer questions -- that's why this man left the hearing," Byrd said. [...]
Dye told senators the hearing had "diverted" him and other MSHA officials. He said they needed to leave in order to, in part, deal with a mine fire in Colorado.
Apparently, Dye was referring to a fire at Arch Coal Inc.'s West Elk Mine. That fire has been burning since November. The mine is temporarily closed, and there were no reports this week of any emergency situations there. [emphasis added]
But what is the real urgency with the West Elk Mine?
When i Google "West Elk Mine" and "Colorado," i encounter a series of news articles from January 3 and January 4. A few brief excerpts tell the story:
"Fire-damaged Colorado mine set to reopen..."
SOMERSET, Colo. (January 3, 2006) - Arch Coal, Inc. today announced that its efforts to suppress the combustion-related event at the West Elk mine appear to have been successful.
Jan 3, 2006 -- NEW YORK (Reuters) - Arch Coal Inc. on Tuesday said it expects the idling of its West Elk mine to negatively impact fourth-quarter results by $25 million to $35 million.
"St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc. [is the] nation's second-largest coal producer..."
So the fire was out weeks ago. They were already making plans to re-open the mine. And as this goes to the web, Google doesn't reveal any other mine fires in Colorado making the news. (There are numerous decades-old coal mine fires smouldering around the state, but apparently none worthy of media attention.)
The news stories from January 3 and 4 don't indicate any serious safety issues at the mine, and there aren't any more recent stories about a Colorado mine fire in the news that i could find. Now, absence of news articles isn't proof of no existing mine fire in Colorado, but it is powerfully suggestive. It appears that the great emergency is a need for the nation's second largest coal company to get Mine Safety and Health Administration clearance to ramp up production at the West Elk Mine.
What are the implications? Could it be that acting MSHA chief David G. Dye, one of the nation's foremost safety officials, is more concerned about production and corporate profits from a Colorado mine than about safety issues being addressed in the United States Senate?
At least one writer seems to see a pattern. Ruth Marcus writes in the Washington Post that walking out of the hearing:
in a nutshell, is the way this executive branch treats its supposedly equal partner: as an annoying impediment to the real work of government. It provides information to Congress grudgingly, if at all. It handles letters from lawmakers like junk mail, routinely tossing them aside without responding. [...]
It thinks of congressional oversight as if it were a trip to the dentist, to be undertaken reluctantly and gotten over with as quickly as possible. Most astonishingly, it reserves the right simply to ignore congressional dictates that it has decided intrude too much on executive branch power.
The columnist concludes,
There have been some welcome stirrings of late from Republican lawmakers who may have tired of being walked out on by the executive branch, figuratively and literally. If so, better late than never. Because the only way this kind of behavior will stop is if members of Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, choose not to take it anymore.
Maybe the media is awakening just a bit, as well.
WV Miners Have the "Guts" to Dig Coal.
We often make fun of West Virginia. I was raised to do so. From our fancy, sophisticated perch on the top of Ohio, we saw West Virginians as hillbillies and hicks. When we walked into a diner and saw a woman behind the counter, working her tail off, hair in a beehive, extra polite, spanking-white uniform, speaking with a drawl, we thought, "West Virginia." And we looked down on that good woman. And thought, "hillbilly." Was the makeup wrong? Was the body too thin? Maybe the map on the face told too many hardscrabble stories. People in our part of the state - Italians and Polacks and Irish and whatever - have always looked askance at the folks from West Virginia, the same way they once looked askance at each other.
But this week, if you walked across the floor to turn your thermostat up, you were risking a coal miner's life. Half of America's energy comes from coal - much of it from West Virginia mines. A coal miner buries himself alive each day. He kisses his family goodbye and rides a bucket two miles into the earth. There he toils until they pull him up and he goes home for a hug and supper.
I guess we don't think too much about what keeps the lights on. Why should we? We are, after all, so smart. We take so many things for granted. But the power behind that electricity is those guys in the mines.
Almost 40 years ago, I traveled with photographer Ted Schneider Jr. to one of the worst coal mine disasters in history. Farmington, W.Va. Ninety-nine miners were entombed by an explosion. Seventy-eight died. Schneider and I talked to the widows. We talked to the local undertaker, a guy named Blaine Toothman, about how he was out of body
bags and was ordering more from other towns in the state.
We covered all the announcements from the coal company union representative. Bulletins came every four hours. Families went home and slept and then dragged themselves back to a barren room with a microphone at the front of it. The news from the mike was always the same: No news. Still trapped.
There weren't as many media then. Now the media outnumber reality - reality meaning the real people with heartbreak at stake.
Media are the people who surround them looking to pick up a sound bite and carry it home to feed a hungry 24-hour format. We have, since those days, smothered reality. We've bent it and shaped it into something useful.
If somebody doesn't cry enough, move the camera to somebody who does. If an overweight mother cries too much, look for her telegenic daughter. In
the age of television, we audition catastrophe.
Back then in Farmington, we found the principal of a local high school who was furious. "We try to teach them," he said. "We do our best to educate them - to give them a way out. But they all go back down in the same d----d mines."
Schneider took a photo from a cemetery on a hill. It showed the gravestones of the miners who had gone to that high school and died in that town. And then we left. But I took a piece of West Virginia with me, and I carry it to this day. They are tough down there in West Virginia.
They are nothing to make fun of. They have pride. They shift for themselves. And they ask for nothing. They are the best of America.
After last week's disaster at the Sago Mine, the miners said they wanted to go back underground to work. That high school principal, if he hasn't retired, is probably still frustrated. But I saw some miners interviewed.
One of them explained that the mines were in his blood. And that his fellow miners were his brothers. And that you don't just quit.
God bless the hillbilly hicks. They are the pilot light of America.
Contact Dick Feagler at: dfeagler@plaind.com
Yes, there's a pattern. But i don't think the media has hit that theme very much (except for a few columnists.)
But i expect when Abramoff hits the fan, it will change the appearance of everything.
best wishes,
richard
I happen to be a Wobbly-- a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. We think working people (and especially working class working people) are wonderful, the salt of the earth. Hardscrabble is our middle name. :-)
best wishes,
richard
He is pompous, arrogant, and convinved that he is better than the little people. Lately he has been crying and moaning for someone to help him out of this mess. So far no white knights at MSHA.
Now you know the rest of the story.