Thursday, August 30, 2007

can we stop calling it an accident?

From Dictionary.com:
ac·ci·dent (ˈæksɪdənt[ak-si-duhnt])–noun: ... 3) any event that happens unexpectedly...
Maintaining he cares deeply for his employees, Murray has accused the UMWA of using the collapses to criticize him and unionize his employees. The Deer Creek mine and the Emery mine are the only organized coal mines in Utah.
Mike Dalpiaz, international vice president of the UMWA office in Price, and the mayor of Helper, said the union had no strong interest in organizing the Crandall Canyon mine. He pointed to indications the mine was due to close soon anyway.

The [Bush Administration's] Mine Safety and Health Administration has determined the United Mine Workers of America union cannot represent the families of six trapped coal miners in the agency's upcoming investigation of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster.

[A] mine in southern Illinois owned by Murray subsidiary American Coal Co. has had a significant number of recent violations.

The Galatia mine, which has about 850 workers and produced 7.2 million tons of coal in 2006, has 869 violations so far this year, leading one mining expert to believe the company is "just going for the production and not going for the safety."

A Deseret Morning News review...shows that while the White House requests increased slightly each year from the 2002 to 2006 fiscal years, the requests did not exceed or even match what Congress had approved in each prior year when adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, the number of coal-mine safety inspectors with the Mine Safety and Health Administration also decreased during those years.

[Indy's Channel 6 News] 9:21 pm EDT August 10, 2007 PRINCETON, Ind. -- Three people were killed Friday at the site of an air shaft under construction at the Gibson County Coal mine in southern Indiana, police said.

Associated Press 08.30.07, 11:52 AM ET WINNEMUCCA, Nev. -Rescue crews have recovered the body of a miner killed during a cave-in at an underground Nevada gold mine, authorities said.
Does all this still sound like an accident to you? Because it sure seems like a direct consequence to me.

1 comment:

JM Bell said...

Adding that the media, almost as a whole, continually fails to either a) link these type of facts together to form a more accurate picture of reality and b) fails to provide historical context to these aforementioned facts to paint a picture, a realistic picture, of the steady decline in mine safety over the last 6 years, makes them, in my opinion, partially complicit in any accident, injury and/or death that occurs, or has occurred, since at least the Sago Mine disaster.

Bob Murray is a blivet, sure, but the media should serve their purpose and repost the whole of WHY he's a blivet, and who relaxed the regulations that have allowed him to achieve his monumental sized blivet status.

You're right that we shouldn't call this an accident, but, I also think that bloggers shouldn't be the only one's who track and define dangerous patterns of behavior.