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To Make Coal Mines Safer, Industry Should Look Abroad

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 4 February 2006
4 comments

Un/Employment Canada-Québec

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinio...

To Make Coal Mines Safer, Industry Should Look Abroad
USA Today Opinion
2/2/2006

When 72 miners were trapped 3,500 feet down in a Canadian mine by a fire that started early Sunday, the frightening episode ended 26 hours later with the last of the miners emerging unscathed and exuberant.

What saved their lives?

They retreated to "safe rooms" scattered throughout the potash mine, where they sealed themselves off from poisonous vapors, drew on supplies of oxygen and food, and waited to be rescued.

Laws in Canadian provinces mandate these refuge rooms in most mines - a sharp contrast to the United States, where federal law requires them only under some circumstances and only in some mines. Coal mines are largely exempt.

The difference stands out dramatically after the work-related deaths of 16 West Virginian coal miners since the beginning of the year. Safe rooms might have made a difference for 12 men who perished at the Sago Mine after an explosion Jan. 2. Since then, four more miners have died in work-related fires and accidents, the most recent on Wednesday.

The sudden spate of deaths triggered a call by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration for the nation’s coal mines to take a one-hour timeout before each shift Monday to instruct miners about hazards and safeguards. But if the mining industry and federal watchdogs want to make U.S. mines safer, an hour won’t do it. They might look to other countries, where stricter laws and the use of newer technologies are putting the U.S. promise of safety to shame.

In recent years, the fortunes and the safety record of the U.S. coal mining industry have improved. Coal prices and production are up dramatically; fatality and injury rates were down, at least until this year began. One of the deadliest months in U.S. mining history suggests that regulators and the industry have been lulled into complacency. They have either ignored or rejected safety tools used in other nations.

Among the most promising:

• Personal emergency devices, developed 20 years ago, can be worn by miners to receive text-message warnings of danger. The devices, which can send signals through earth and rock, are used extensively in underground mines in Australia and Canada, according to PED-maker Mine Site Technologies. But even after PEDs were touted for helping save lives in a 1998 fire at a mine in Carbon County, Utah, fewer than 30 U.S. coal mines have taken advantage of the technology. The industry questions their reliability, and federal regulators, who might have tested the technology long ago to settle that question, have not mandated their use.

• Caches of oxygen tanks to give miners an extra hour to escape are required in the province of Alberta, home to one of Canada’s two underground coal mines. A regulation that might have mandated the extra tanks (each miner carries a one-hour oxygen supply) was in the pipeline when the Bush administration took office, but regulators tossed it out in 2001. After Sago, regulators are taking another look.

The U.S. industry says it is devoted to making mines safer. It would be easier to take that seriously if the industry’s profitability were translating into major safety improvements. Even in the industry’s safest year - 2005 - 57 miners died. If the industry won’t invest in obvious safety tools and proven technologies, then Congress or regulators will have to show them the way.

Forum posts

  • The US simply has to bring back the safety laws which have been scrapped over the past 30 years and the Unions get off there ass and back to organizing. There is very little comparison between Potash Mines and Coal Mines in degrees of danger. As a former miner I worked only in Hard Rock Mines eg goal, silver etc ( with a strong union) where you have greater control over risk. I would beg before I went underground in present day coal mines, which includes Canada where we have a long history of disasters. In Virginia its probably safer to join the army and duck IED’s than falling rock and having to ignore basic safety regulations because you need to feed you kids.
    These guys know their playing Russian Roulette every day.

    cheers, jt

    • Here are two links which will provide greater information on Sago than MSM publications like USA Today, would care to discuss, other than in vague terms, for fear of offending their advertisers...

      http://www.counterpunch.org/ely01072006.html

      http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/mine-j14.shtml

      cheers, jt

    • The previous links are interesting but if you really want The Sago Story to get you in the gut try this:

      In fact, International Coal Group has owned the Tallmansville mine since it bought the Anker Coal Group Inc. in an all-stock transition valued $173.25 million plus assumption of $25 million in debt, according to an ICG press release on April 1, 2005. International Coal Group is itself owned by multi billionaire investor Wibur Ross, who is known in the world of investments as a "vulture investor." According to a Business Week profile from December 22, 2003, vulture investing is "a corner of the finance world dominated by big personalities who rise to prominence in times like these, the bust after a boom." Those involved in this type of investing are not usually interested in long term involvement in their investments preferring instead to get improved returns and a fast exit by reselling the "distressed" companies at a profit. The improvements usually involve some form of restructuring of the purchased companies: new management, cutting corners so that profits will increase, or new sales strategies are the favored "improvements." After these so-called improvements are made, vulture investors then sell their investments for a profit, usually to even larger companies. As the Business Week article puts it, "ultimately he (Ross) makes money from others’ misfortune."

      The complete article can be found at:

      http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs01042006.html

      ITS NOT SURPRISING THAT USA TODAY WOULD WANT READERS TO LOOKK ELSEWHERE !!!

      the final hurrah, jt

  • USA just pretenders. Consumer and Employee laws don’t hardly exists, or are not enforced. EPA - is the greatest joke, they claim they enforce the highest environmental standards around the globe. A joke.
    You can do whatever you want in the states if you do it in the name of business, profit or patriotism. It is not only Canada which has human standards. Americans are laughing about slow "progress" in Europe, because the EU comission actually watches and enforces also safetey laws for workers. Exemption is Great Britain, the reptil capitalism does not allow to spend money on safety just like in the United States the land of the free. Free from all law and common sense?
    There is much to say, not one of those in America operated cars could endure a technical inspection in Europe. The laws or rules are flawed in America. Today it is the miners, tomorrow we here about amazing accidents in small chemical plants in the U. S..

    Money, money that is all what counts!