The Cruel Mistake: 12 of 13 Miners Found Dead.

In a so far inexplicable series of miscommunication and rumor, initial false reports that 12 of the 13 miners trapped in a West Virginia mine were found alive turned out to be the exact opposite of the truth.

Only one man survived, 27-year-old Randall McCloy Jr. He was  is in critical condition in a Morgantown hospital.

Angry family members said they had been lied to by company officials, and said mining officials offered no explanation for the foul-up.

"They said they were sorry," said Sam Lantz, whose brother-in-law, Marty Bennett, was among the miners.

Lantz said mining company officials came into the Sago Baptist Church, where family members were celebrating what they thought was a miracle and told them, "We didn't have the good news we thought we had earlier."

Mr. Hatfield attributed the mistake to "a miscommunication."

He said that company officials received a report from a rescue team down in the mine that 12 miners had been found and were alive. Twenty minutes later, he said, they learned that initial report was wrong; that only one of the 12 was still alive.

But someone in the command center at the mine site heard the report that 12 of the miners were alive and relayed it to family members at the church, prompting a joyous celebration.

I grew up around miners in a small Western Pennsylvania town that was more or less founded because of coal. Many men in my family, and many more who were the fathers, uncles and brothers of friends worked in the local mines until they had been depleted of the deep veins of bituminous coal. When the coal was gone, the mining companies left and left these men to deal with what was left of their lives.

Both of my grandfathers ended up with black lung from breathing in coal dust. My father's father spent years in and out of hospitals from injuries he suffered in the mines.

As everyone knows, mining is exceedingly dangerous. What many do not know is that it isn't quite as lucrative as commonly thought. The early generations of miners--before the  advent of the UMWA--worked long hours for meager pay. After the union gained power, mining did become a job that paid well, but since that second wave, more and more non-union mines have opened, and more benefits have been given back.

In West Virginia, for instance, a miner's family cannot sue the company he worked for for any more than the miner's earnings. A miner's life is clocked at about 60 years. Some of these men were already in their 50s.

I know nothing about ICG, the company that now owns the Sago Mine. This mine has a long history of safety violations, but ICG just took control of this mine in November, 2005 and has an improving record.

For those who have ever walked deep into the earth to extract some thing that the world wants, this is a sad, black day.

For the families, we can only imagine what they have gone through, each day, and today.

Comments

[John Lacny]

International Coal Group is the creation of Wilbur Ross, the same speculator who created International Steel Group. People around here will remember International Steel as the group that bought out LTV and Bethlehem Steel after extracting substantial concessions from the Steelworkers and dumping the pension liabilities onto the public (in the form of the PBGC). Ross is now doing the same in coal; this current company was formed in 2004 when he bought Horizon and dumped that company's pension (underfunded by $87 million) on the public. Once he's sucked these companies dry -- particularly the workers, and no one cares if a dozen or several dozen of them die along the way -- he'll probably sell off International Coal at a tidy profit, the same way he did with International Steel when he sold to Lakshmi Mittal for $4.5 billion.

The Sago mine was formerly owned by Anker, which International Coal acquired in November. It doesn't do to say that their record was "improving." If there were that many outstanding safety violations, the mine shouldn't have been in operation at all until those problems were fixed. And of course, you can't count on the Bush government to do proper inspections, either, particularly since Bush's OSHA is required to give employers 24 hours advance warning before inspections.

[Richard Myers]

Citizens form group to protect coal miners

Sago Outrage is a maillist, gathering supporters. We plan to put the issue of the safety of coal miners, and by extension the safety of all working people, on the national agenda.


Here's the first message, an overview of the Sago disaster:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sago_outrage/message/1


If you're concerned that there's no justice for coal miners, please join Sago Outrage:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sago_outrage/

Thanks!

richard myers
Moderator, Sago Outrage
Denver, Colorado

rtmyers@h2net.net