Speak Your Piece: Finding Evil In The Federal Register

editor — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:29:08 -0700

A coal miner prepares for his shift at Centennial Coal's Mandalong mine on the New South Wales central coast of Australia. Australian law requires a mine-wide communication system. U.S. law doesn't.
Photo: Rossco

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a series of editorials about coal mine safety from The Mountain Eagle, a weekly newspaper in Whitesburg, Kentucky. If your local paper runs a story or editorial others should know about, send it to the Yonder.

Robert Murray, a mine owner obviously in need of clinical help, insisted from day one that the August 6 cave-in at his Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah was a natural disaster, triggered by an earthquake that no one could have anticipated. More than two weeks later, after all efforts to locate six trapped miners had failed and after three rescuers had died trying to reach them, Murray was still trying to pin the blame on an “evil mountain.�?

Every coal miner in America knew better. And by now, thanks largely to solid reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune, we all know what was really evil about the Crandall Canyon disaster.

Speak Your Piece: Did They All Die In Vain?

editor — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:45:44 -0700

An explosion at the Monongah Mine in West Virginia in 1907 killed 360 people — 170 of them Italian. The Italian government paid for this statue. Monongah commemorated the 100th anniversary of the disaster last week.
Photo: Shuttersparks

Editor's Note: Coal mining communities have a lot in common. The Mountain Eagle is published in the heart of the Appalachian coal fields. The questions it asks this week about the events at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, half a continent away, are ones that are important to all mining towns.

First, call the roll of those killed in action:
Tom Anderson, Jarred Ashmore, James Bennett, Marty Bennett, Dale Black, David Bolen, Don Bragg, Amon Brock, Stevie Joe Browning, Steven Bryant, Timothy Caudill, Russell Cecchine, Thomas Channell, Mario Corriveau, Richard Cox, Wade Drew, Brett Gibson, John Elliott, Edward Fitzgerrel, Jeremy Garcia, Charles Griffith, Jerry Groves, Junior Hamner, Howard Harvey, Elvis Hatfield, Todd Heckler, Terry Helms, Shane Jacobson, Gary Jensen, Dale Jones, Garry Jones, Jesse Jones, Brandon Kimber, Jimmy Lee, David Lewis, Eddie Linton, John May, Daniel McFadden, Jerry McKinney, Rick McKnight, Bobby Messer, Roy Middleton, Willard Miller, Jason Mosley, Paul Moss, George Petra, Pete Poindexter, Dale Reightler, Christopher Richardson, Robert Runyon, Joseph Seay, Tony Swiney, James Thomas, Paris Thomas, Jr., James Thornsbury, Jackie Toler, Martin Toler, Jr., Todd Upton, Edmund Vance, Fred Ware, Jr., Jackie Weaver, Michael Wilt, Marshall Winans, Cornelius Yates.
Next, the names of those missing in action:
Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Brandon Phillips, Juan Carlos Payan, Manuel Sanchez.
Lost in Iraq? Afghanistan? No, these are the 63 coal miners (18 of them from Kentucky) and one federal mine inspector who have been killed in U.S. mines since January 1, 2006 – plus the six who, as of this writing, remain unaccounted for, in the slow-motion collapse of Murray Energy’s Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah.