Right now, CNN.com has the “We Got 12 Alive!!” headline right under the red “breaking news” banner stating that in fact, only 1 survived.
This is so incredibly sad. I guess that one miner is not in good shape. The CEO of the company said that one of the rescue team had “miscommunicated” that 12 were alive, but he refused to point fingers. He said those guys were down there risking their lives to save these miners and it was a simple case of being overly optimistic before the men had been examined. I guess we will hear more tomorrow about how this happened. He said the company had never announced that 12 were alive; that some unknown person had heard the first communication and had spread the word without their permission. No one is to blame. Very, very sad.
The change from “they’ve all survived” to “the majority are dead” has been the lead story on the evening news here. It’s terribly tragic. I suppose misplaced optimism is to blame. I’d hate to think it was anything else.
How horrid. 
I’ve got the local news on. It’s 12 out of 13 dead, and the one who survived is in critical condition. I was following this yesterday evening. They had the fiance of one of the miners on the news last night; I can’t imagine how she must be feeling today.
The president of the coal company sounded genuinely remorseful. I heard on NPR that the current owners bought the mine in November and were working on improving its safety record; this was confirmed on my local paper’s web page. Still, it’s also being reported in several places that the mine had three times as many injuries as the national average.
I suspect there’s going to be a lot of anger once the sorrow passes.
On the news last night, they said the families were reminding themselves that the Quecreek miners survived 77 hours. The difference is that was a collapse; this was an explosion. One person who made it out of the mine reported seeing a fireball which seared his eyes, I think to the point where he was hospitalized.
By the way, speaking of inappropriate ads, the station which carries the local news just had an ad for mine subsidence insurance. :rolleyes:
CJ
Last night my husband woke me to tell me the good news that the miners were all alive.
I wake up to see this awful news.
I feel like I’ve been sucker punched.
What, exactly, is coal used for in this day and age?
I’m less optimistic. I suspect this will quickly be collectively forgotten once something involving a celebrity happens in the next few weeks, like Angelina Jolie giving birth to Charlie Sheen’s alien baby, or a celebrity show trial.
They’re now saying it’s the Governor of West Virginia who heard that 12 miners were alive and said it was a miracle. Cheers broke out in the command center.
As for my comments about anger, yes, in a month the country as a whole will have forgotten and been distracted by the latest bright shiny thing dangled in front of them. It’ll take longer down in Tallmansville. Short term, they’re reporting that threats have been made against the coal company and the media.
CJ
Coal still provides the majority of the country’s electricity. Those guys who go down there keep our whole civilization running.
It certainly would have been far kinder never to have raised everyone’s hopes like that. What a horrible foul-up in communications. There’s a weird resonance with the movie Munich; the same damn thing happened back in 1972, with initial reports that all the hostages had survived, when in fact they had all been killed.
I’m happy and surprised that one family has good news, but for the others this is such a tragedy. I hope those that lost their loved ones find peace. I only hope that somehow something is learned from this and it makes mining a safer profession. Those guys risk a lot just for us to keep the lights burning.
I can imagine someone misheard “We found 12 of them” and interpreted that to mean they found 12 alive. My sympathies and prayers are with the families.
How come, in this day and age of satellites and cell phones and business card-sized Ipods, are we still sending people underground to dig? Can we not do this with robots? They could build a factory in town to construct the robots and the miners could become factory workers instead.
No doubt. But since the alternative is more cameras in the faces of the grieving friends and families, and reporters saying, “Tell me, just HOW did you feel?” I can live with that.
This morning’s headline in the Charleston (WV) Gazette was “‘Twelve Alive!’” a la “Dewey Defeats Truman”. The lead editorial: “Miraculous: 12 miners saved” What a painful stab to an already painful situation.
Well, the mines are now highly mechanized. There are far fewer miners per ton of coal than, say, twenty years ago. Unfortunately it just lead to high unemployment rather than more factory jobs.
I read the paper today, with the “miraculous save” news, and then logged onto cbc.ca to get here.
Tears in my eyes and knots in my stomach. That was horrible.
Believe me, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing that the mine owners would like more than to reduce the number of people working in the mines. Every time I talk to a mining corporation exec in private they tell me the same thing - they dream of a day when NO ONE will be working underground except for routine maintenance. They have gone to extreme lengths to automate the longwall processes, as well as every aspect of the mining process in general. However, this is not necessarily due to any real “safety” concerns, but more due to wanting to get rid of labour, union, and health-payout problems. Machines may break down, but they don’t go on strike, cause bad PR when they get sick or buried in a collapse, and they don’t do things like set rails on fire or take rifles and shoot at people during strikes. Well, not yet anyways…
The technology simply does not exist today to mine completely automatically, or even via remote/telepresence. Strides are being made, however, and it is possible that within my lifetime there will be some heavily automated mines. Once a longwall is set up and in place it is possible that parts of it could be run by remote control from aboveground, but it ends up adding more expense, trouble, and even some safety issues. It will take a while for things to really improve.
And a note - while the number of miners needed per ton of coal produced has increased almost steadily in the US, MUCH of that increase is due to the use of open-pit mines in the Wyoming PRB, not necessarily due to increases in mining efficiency.
All excellent, and very true points. Thinking more clearly, the last significant jump in underground coal mining productivity was probably more like 50 years ago. I plead brain fart.
Um…your brain fart is not as large as mine. I wrote the wrong thing:
That “increased” should instead read “decreased”, as it takes less miners to produce a ton of coal in open-pit mining. I know that as well as the back of my hand, and yet somehow I cannot communicate clearly. :smack:
it is understandable how one could have trouble understanding someone who is in a tunnel, breathing through a mask, and speaking in mike.
i deal with couriers on a two way phone, most of the time it is garbled. we have to repeat things constantly.
what i found troubling is that when they realized within 45 minutes (ish) that the news was different no one said anything. someone should have stepped up to the mike and said “we have found them, we do not know their condition at this time.”
something along those lines would have helped the families.
I understand that the one miner that survived is an electrician, but goes into the mine because the money is so good. Here in southern CA an electrician make 30 or 40 dollars an hour. I know they make less in West Virginia, but how much money does a miner make in West Virginia an hour?