Miner's Notes Reveal Their Final Moments

[FVZA_Colonel]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060106/ap_on_re_us/mine_explosion_142;_ylt=AjnUaUQ7Y.UhTs6JlK9PmNe9aaEv;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl



Miners' Notes Reveal Their Final Moments
By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Some of the 12 coal miners who died in the Sago Mine disaster scrawled farewell notes assuring their loved ones that their final hours trapped underground amid toxic gases were not spent in agony.

"Tell all I'll see them on the other side," read the note found with the body of 51-year-old mine foreman Martin Toler Jr. "It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you Jr."

Tom Toler, Martin's older brother who worked 30 years in the mine with him, said Thursday that the note was "written very lightly and very loosely" in block letters on the back of an insurance application form his brother had in his pocket.

"I took it to mean that it was written in the final stages," the brother said. "I'd call it more or less scribbling."

[madeline_con]

1. As heartbreaking as this is...

I'd be comforted knowing someone I loved didn't suffer, but drifted to sleep. :cry:

[rodeodance]

7. I agree.

[Old and In the Way]

2. How hard must it have been for the family to read this?

nt

[gizmo1979]

3. You know if I was about to die.

wrote a note to my love ones I'd like my loved ones to read the note,not the whole F@#@king world.Why can't we as people allow grieving people to grieve.I would not be a very nice person for a reporter to talk to after a tragedy.Let the poor people alone.

[pinto]

4. What a sweet thing to do for the family. Really.

[Rose Siding]

5. Wow- worst mining disaster since Sept '01.

Bet that one didn't get very much attention. I barely remember...

This is the first article that came up on a search:

Thirteen coal miners are dead as the result of two gas explosions September 23 at the Jim Walter Resources Blue Creek No. 5 Mine in Brookwood, Alabama. Ten of the victims were miners who refused to evacuate and rushed to help coworkers after the first explosion.

Rescue workers are flooding sections of the mine to extinguish fires that have made it impossible to retrieve bodies trapped a half mile underground. Officials estimate that it will take at least six days to begin recovering the miners’ bodies in what is the worst US mining disaster since December 1984, when 27 workers were killed in the Wilberg mine near Orangeville, Utah.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/mine-s27.shtml

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Knowing our heartless system, they'll take that note as a sign

that there was no pain and suffering, thus no punitive charges should be awarded.

[dryan]

8. I think that this note...

shows that this man was thinking of his family's feelings. No one -- unless you are a total sadist -- wants to believe that someone suffered when they died. When my father died recently, that was the first thing I asked.

[daleo]

9. I wonder if we are getting the full story here

Maybe I have grown too cynical, but I would have thought at least one letter might have had a complaint or two about the mining company's safety record.

On edit - To add to my cynicism, perhaps part of the two hour delay in telling the truth about the deaths was to ensure that no notes that implicated the company saw the light of day.

[Catrina]

10. I just heard on the news that it will take 6 days to recover the bodies

If that is true, how did they get that note? Is it that they can reach them, but can't bring them out yet? Or have they removed some of them?

As far as the note being used in an insurance case to diminish any settlement, that is true. I was shocked to find that out when someone close to me was killed in an accident, the lawyers told me that they had talked to all the rescue workers to see if he had suffered. I was very relieved to hear that apparently he had not. The lawyer then said 'please don't take this the wrong way, but this is going to diminish the settlement. It would have been bigger had he suffered'. I was absolutely horrified! What more 'pain and suffering' is there than to lose your life and not be able to see your children grow up, be there for your loved ones, work, laugh, cry, play and hug those you love, because someone decided to drive when they should not have?

Who on earth thinks up these monstrous rules? What is a family member supposed to do or feel when a lawyer explains this to them? Wish their loved HAD suffered? And why are these laws not known about by the public before they are passed?

So, to the poster above who said they were cynical? I am wondering now, is that note legitimate, especially if what I just heard on the news means that none of the bodies have been recovered yet. His brother doesn't seem to be verifying that the writing was his brother's.

I hate it that this past four years have caused me to think this way. Thoughts I would never have had before that, now seem more than possible. People who approve of torture, who dismiss the deaths of innocent civilians as if they are nothing, who lie to go war, play on the emotions of people after a tragedy, allow people to die in front of the world, for five days, while they have time to rescind laws that would not benefit their contractor friends? These people, I know now are capable of anything ~