The Sago Coal Mine Disaster and Mine Safety: One-Year Update

It has been a year since the Sago coal mine tragedy that took 12 lives. Only one man, Randal McCloy, miraculously survived and was able to go home.

Unfortunately, 2006’s coal-mining fatality total came in at a clearly unacceptable 47 (33 in the first six months), more than double the alltime low achieved in 2005, and the highest number since 1995’s total, which was also 47.

Many times the lookbacks at situations such as these become occasions for destructive recriminations and uninformed criticism. Tim Huber of the Associated Press didn’t allow either to happen in his report, and when someone at AP gets it right, it surely deserves notice. His one-year lookback, update, and multi-sided critique is very thorough, and appears to give all parties involved their say regarding what happened, what has been done since, and what the companies and regulators are trying to do to get a handle on things.

Read the whole article, and keep the considerable improvements that are being attempted in mind if/when the New York Times, which brazenly and falsely attempted to pin the blame for Sago on the President and the Mine Safefy and Health Administration (MSHA), tries to resurrect its tired and disproven all-purpose mantras of “not spending enough money” and “stacking the deck with industry insiders.” Unfortunately for the Times, that BizzyBlog post (also mirrored at NewsBusters) plus a related one by Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics that focused on falling injury rates, both got wide enough circulation that they largely negated what in the pre-blog days might have turned into a Times-led propaganda rout. Too bad, so sad, NYT.

Bevan, reacting to what he was seeing from the Times and others, was appalled, and wrote:

….. this is the first time we’ve seen an effort to try and blame a President for contributing to deaths related to a tragic mining accident. It certainly didn’t happen under Clinton, nor for that matter do I recall it happening with the Quecreek mining accident in 2002 – perhaps because there was a happy ending to that story. It just goes to show how distorted and dishonest the level of discourse has become in the country recently because of the left’s insatiable hatred for President Bush.

Back to more current matters — If there’s a bright spot, relatively speaking, it’s that the coal-mining death toll appears to have slowed down to “only” 14 in the second half of 2006, which is of course 14 too many, but a vast improvement over the first half.

More info for those who want to learn more:

• MSHA’s “Safety and Health at a Glance,” which includes important metrics on inspection efforts and the like (not updated for 2006 yet, which is not surprising).
• An MSHA press release from December 8, 2006 about “a final rule that requires mine operators to increase the availability of emergency breathing devices, provide improved training on the use of the devices, improve emergency evacuation and drill training, install lifelines for emergency evacuation, and require immediate notification of MSHA in the event of an accident.” That final item is also known as the “15-minute rule.” All mine operators, including operators of other types of mines, must report mining accidents within that amount of time.
• Information about The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (the “MINER Act”), which became law in June 2006.

______________________________

Previous Posts:
- Apr. 5, 2006 — Positivity: Why the ‘miracle miner’ survived
- Mar. 31 — Positivity: Randal McCloy Returns Home
- Mar. 22 — The Unreality-Based Community, New York Times Coal Mine Safety Division
- Jan. 11 — John Merline of TCS Daily on the Reality of Mine Safety
- Jan. 9 — The WaPo Sago Saga: Kurtz Critiques Mine Disaster Reporting, and Like Others, Ignores the Stats
- Jan. 6 — The NY Times and The AFL-CIO Futilely Attempt to Exploit the Sago 12
- Jan. 5 — The New York Times’ Disgraceful (and Wrong) Opportunism in the West Virginia Coal Mine Deaths