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8-20-07, 10:07 am
Last Friday, mine safety officials suspended underground efforts to rescue six trapped miners in the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah.
The decision was made after a second collapse at the mine killed 3 rescue workers and injured six others last Thursday (Aug. 16).
The decision to temporarily stop searching for Luis Alonso Hernandez, Manuel Sanchez, Kerry Allred, Brandon Phillips, Don Erickson, and Carlos Payan who have been trapped for two weeks had sparked anger in the local community.
Saturday, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) ordered a resumption of above ground drilling.
Charges that the mine was unsafe and prone to collapse have surfaced. Company documents leaked to the local media suggest the company knew the mine was in an unsafe condition and did little to prevent the catastrophe.
According to media reports, 325 federal safety citations were issued against the Crandall Canyon Mine, over 100 of which were deemed dangerous or life-threatening to workers.
Just last month, the mine was cited for lacking a second escape passage – in the area that collapsed on the six trapped miners.
The fines for the violations totaled a mere $6,000. They appear to not have been paid nor had the problems cited been fixed. The mine is non-union.
Speaking of the problem of the lack of enforcement, Richard Trumka, the Vice President of the AFL-CIO and a former head of the United Mine Workers of America, told reporters this week that, "MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, has become basically a cadaver under George Bush."
Mine safety advocates have accused MSHA Director Richard Stickler of siding with mine owners and blocking measures that would beef up safety and health standards in the country's mines.
The Crandall Canyon mine used a method of mining called "pillar" or "retreat" mining considered by experts to be a dangerous technique.
Interviewed last Thursday (Aug. 16) on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Dennis O'Dell, director of health and safety for the United Mine Workers of America, linked the mining process to the collapse.
"When you look at the area where they were pillar mining or retreat mining, you look at that and see that this was going to happen," O'Dell said.
In addition to stronger enforcement of safety regulations, O'Dell called for better emergency medical training and tracking equipment to help locate trapped miners better.
One resident of the nearby mining community of Wellington, was quoted by the New York Times as saying: "[E]veryone agrees on one thing: there is no reason that we shouldn't know where the [trapped miners] are, because there is technology that they should have had with them."
Millionaire Robert Murray, co-owner of the mine and a large Republican Party donor, refused to accept responsibility for the disaster deflecting blame to natural causes.
The United Mine Workers of America supports passage of the MINER Act as a good first step to implementing important safety reforms to protect workers' health and lives.
--Joel Wendland can be reached at
jwendland@politicalaffairs.net
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