About The Mines

[ThomWV]

West Virginia. I'm not from here, you should know that. Been here a little over 30 years.

The mines aren't what they used to be. There are less of them and the big ones are gone. A lot less people work in the mines these days too. A lot less.

Men get hurt, women do too. There are more woman miners than you might imagine. They all get hurt sooner or later. Some of them get hurt bad.

Popping rock. The layers of rock the miners burrow through are under tremendous pressure. When a shaft is carved into a seam of coal the pressure is relieved on the bottom side of the roof. Sometimes the rocks in the roof just explode into the empty space below. If they hit you they'll kill you. That's popping rock.

Roof falls. The name means exactly what it says. If a roof falls and you're under it you die.

Explosions. Look at the weather channel. See that big low pressure system situated right over the middle of West Virginia? When storms come and the air pressure drops the rock of the mines releases gas faster. The gas builds up and is available for explosion. You want to know why that mine blew up when it did? Like I said, look at the Weather Channel.

Black Lung. Every one of my male neighbors over the age of 40 had it. It comes from breathing the coal dust in the mines. Coal dust is explosive in the right concentration but its a carcinogen in any concentration. Even to this day most miners smoke too. Great combination.

Over 60% of the electrical power generated in the United States uses Coal as the original power source.

[datadiva]

1. Wow, thank you for that

I was wondering what lightening mentioned on the news had to do with an explosion in the mine.

[RagingInMiami]

2. Good informative post

Recommended.

[f-bush]

3. Safety Violations

I had heard there were over 180 safety citations issued for this particular mine. Once again, same old story of big business not giving a shit about it's employees, just profits!

[libhill]

26. Which is

always made much easier in a repuke administration - I wonder how many for those miners voted repuke against their own best interests - most of them, I'd bet.

[tularetom]

4. And yet

a lot of those affected by tragedies like today's would take the side of the mining companies if they threatened to close the mines and eliminate jobs. Go figure. I'm so fuckin pissed at the assholes who would let this happen I wish they were here so I could relieve them of a few teeth. I hope something positive in the way of job safety and environmental protection comes out of this.

[doc03]

19. You're right when ever the mining companies threaten

to close a mine in this area they do get their way. The reason is these are the few good paying jobs with benefits left in this area, since the USA bought into this free trade BS a few years ago. If you talk to a miner they are proud to be miners and like their jobs. Like one of the other posters said this disproves the BS that Americans won't work those jobs. The simple fact is the miners make a good living, if they would pay a farm worker a livable wage an American would do that job too and we wouldn't have a need to bring in illegal workers. A coal miner makes from $50000 to as much as $100000 with overtime while the average wage in WV is something like $24000.

[ptolle]

41. good luck on that

Perhaps not the impromptu dentistry which would likely get you an assault rap, but on the safety and enviro front with the way the * maladministration has transferred oversight authority to the industry itself by appointing former execs and lobbyists to positions in the oversight agencies which I believe might have happened in this case. Something I saw here:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/60minutes/main609889.shtml.
But this sort of thing is all too common to these criminals. Further, I'd bet that the presence of a sturdy, functioning union would have, if not prevented, at least diminished the possibility of this accident.

[Ksec]

5. I know these people well

Im about 75 miles North of the mine and these are some hardy people. I always laugh when I hear someone say there are jobs Americans wont do. Coal mining is dangerous filthy work. If Americans will do this job, theyll do any job. I hear that company had a history of safety violations and this is what happens when companies get lax.

[Genki]

8. Calling My Fellow Mountaineers

Y'all c'mon and please join those of us folks already posting in the West Virginia topic:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=185

[Ksec]

9. actually Im right across the river from you

but Im with you guys. We have lots of miners who live here in the tri state area. OH/WVA/PA

[ohio_liberal]

38. Hey Ksec!

I'm just downriver from you! :hi:

[Warpy]

6. Don't forget those gas pockets

because whenever they drill into the coal face, they run the risk of drilling into one of those pockets of methane that are all through coal deposits. It seems to be what has killed this crew of miners, an explosion of gas that nobody knew was there. There are supposed to be sensors for the gas, and it'll be interesting to find out if this non union mine had bothered to do the upkeep on them.

May they rest in peace, and may the politicians who have been weakening mine safety standards rot in hell.

[Old and In the Way]

7. Thanks for the info. First I've heard of 'popping rock' and I never

realized how the air pressure impacted on gas release.

It's got to be one of the toughest physical and mental jobs available to Americans. I can't imagine working entombed in the dark for 50 hours/week....sad for the peopple who've lost family and friends in this disaster.

[DemoTex]

10. Thanks, Thom. Important stuff, that.

When I worked for Ken Lay (before Enron), et al, at the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline (Transco), they were buying up coal fields in Kentucky and WV like madmen. Raygunz was in and mine safety was out. It was a hay-day for the oilmen interested in taking over the coal fields.

As a former ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association/AFL-CIO) Central Air Safety Committee member and trained airline accident investigator, I have a nose for lapses in safety standards. Am I correct in assuming that mine safety standards have been further attenuated under the Bu$h regime? Eh? Thought so. Fat, dirty bastards.

[Redneck Socialist]

11. Great sig. n/t

[bigwillq]

12. Great post.

:thumbsup:

[stevedeshazer]

13. Thanks, that is great information.

I'm a little smarter now.

[arikara]

14. My husband used to work underground mining nickel

this was before I knew him. He was trapped in a mine accident for over a day before he was rescued in a small space laying next to his friend who was dead. He then got involved with the union in a big way and into mine accident investigation. He burnt out of that at around the age of 35 and got out of mining. He's had heart problems since his early 40's and has gone through chelation therapy, which is a process where they remove heavy metals and other toxins from your body with a special IV solution that flushes them out. He had the highest levels of heavy metals in his body that they had ever seen, caused by his mining days. Most everyone that he used to work is either dead or has major health problems.

Its a real tough business. My father was also a coal miner for awhile and he got fired while organizing a union drive. That was lucky for him I think.

[Carni]

17. I don't mean this to be a smart ass

In ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM but what slays me is Alaskan King crab fisherman (granted that job also sucks) can pull in huge money because it's so dangerous...the people that paint high rise bridges also get paid a lot--so why the hell are these people in these insidious mining jobs that are major league dangerous getting paid a bullshit wage?

Maybe it's because I am claustrophobic --but there is just no way.
I would die and live on the street in a box before I could do that because I just flat out couldn't do it.

I don't understand why the worst most God awful, dangerous job is paid such a bullshit amount of money--and then the jerks that own it cut corners to boot?

60% of our heat and energy from this?

They (the workers) should shut this whole god damned country down and refuse to work...JMO

[doc03]

24. Just what do you think a coal miner makes anyway?

A Union miner makes at least $50000 and I know some who make $100000 or more with OT, that is a good wage in an area that has an average of about $25000 also the cost of living is low in comparison to the rest of the country. There are a lot of non-union mines in WV that pay less I'm sure but people are willing to take the jobs. You talk to a miner and they love their jobs and will vote against anyone who threatens their livelihood, why do you think Gore lost WV.

[Carni]

25. I thought they made like 33,000 per cable news

I thought WTF that is really low for that job--my comments were not meant to degrade miners I was literally listening to media about wages.

[doc03]

29. If it is a non-union mine they may make that little,

in southern Ohio where I live most of the mines are Union and even the non-union mines have to have fairly competitive wages. Southern West Virginia is notorious for their non-union mines, we had the largest domestic revolt in the US back in the 1920's known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. The government sent something like 10000 troops in to WV to force the miners back to work. There is a great movie about that era called "Matewan" it shows the struggle those people have gone through. If you have seen WV Governor Manchin on TV even though he is a Democrat he is owned by big coal.

[Lindacooks]

43. Sago is a non-union mine.

"...for fear of losing their jobs, the men were afraid to speak out about the unsafe mine conditions. Bennett decried the absence of the United Mine Workers to protect the men in the non-union Sago mine."

http://newsbusters.org/node/3458

[sandnsea]

34. Good point

Gore and WV. Quite annoying to hear people bitch about our Dem candidates "selling out" on the environment when they talk about clean coal, and also blame them when they lose the union mining vote. Montana is a big coal mining state too. You either lose your union vote or your Nader vote, and either way, the Republican gets the win.

[Coastie for Truth]

36. Non-union workers make a heck of a lot less

My dad was a UMW lawyer and worked hard to negotiate those wages. And it took a lot of strikes - and a lot of support from the USW.

[dooner]

27. United Mine Workers Union

was apparently run out of this mine? I caught the end of a news report on MSNBC interviewing the middle-aged son of a
trapped minor. He was talking about safety conditions and no union.

[Redstone]

15. No Nukes! I sure hope the No-Nukers read your post and understand

the cost of generating electricity from coal.

The more coal we use, the more miners WILL die.

So, why is it again, that they're happily generating, I think, more than 40% of their electricity in France from nuclear power plants, and we're not?

Redstone

[ThomWV]

16. 70%

[Redstone]

21. Thanks, TVW. People worry about the nuclear waste, do you know

what they do with it over there?

They don't seem to worry about it as much as we do.

Redstone

[Warpy]

18. It's still cheaper than nukes

because we still don't know how to detoxify nuclear waste. It can kill after 10,000 years.

Do you honestly think we can store it that long and have people that far down the line respect the dumps and stay away from them? Do you really think any area is that geologically stable and far enough away from any ground water to be safe?

Figure out what to do with the garbage and I'll be the first to climb onto that nuclear bandwagon. Until then, our best bet is conservation. If men risk their lives mining fossil fuels of all types, let's make sure we use what they find as carefully as possible.

[Redstone]

20. Vitrification. Though conservation is still #1, I agree.

Coal mining and burning kills people NOW. Haven't heard of anyone dying from nuclear waste yet.

Redstone

[ThomWV]

22. This Is Just A Fact

As one drives around the hill country hereabouts the gob piles from the mnes roughly equal the flyash piles from the steel mills and power stations. There are mountains of each all over western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio as examples.

If you took all of the waste fuel rods from every civilian nuclear reactor every operated in this country and piled it up on a foot ball field the pile would be less than 1 foot high.

That does not speak to the danger of the materials of course but few people understand how small the volume actually is. Here is another very interesting bit of nuclear trivia. Probably the most contaminated site in the United States is the Hanford Reservation in south east Washington state. It is where Plutonium was created and refined from fuel rods and processed into the wafers of material that would go on to fashion bombs. If you looked at the sources of radioactivity at the Hanford site you would discover that 90% of the energy being emitted came from a volume of material which would easily fit in the back of a small pick up truck.

[Coastie for Truth]

40. Century III Mall (West Mifflin PA) and PIT Airport (Coraopolis PA)

are both built on top of steel mill slag and mine waste.

[XOKCowboy]

23. Very short sighted thinking Redstone

Of course people have died from nuclear waste. Have you checked the cancer rates in Richland/Pasco WA where the Hanford Nuclear Project is located?

Nuclear waste will stil be toxic for generations to come. Not just your grandchildren but their grandchildren's granchildren's grandchildren's granchildren's grandchildren will still be affected by the nuclear waste we produce now.

Sorry to rant but we've got to deal with the nuclear waste before nucular power will ever be viable.

[nicknameless]

30. The Academy Award winning documentary "Deadly Deception" gives a clear

picture of the suffering that results from living near a nuclear plant. In the intro, the viewer is taken on a death-and-disease neighborhood tour around the Hanford plant.

A generation is estimated at about 20 years. Nuclear waste can remain deadly for up to hundreds of millions of years.
http://www.downwinders.org/llw_facts.htm

Thank you for your rant.

[Coastie for Truth]

42. I lived near Shippingport

and worked at Bettis -- and I'm still going in my 60's.

[Coastie for Truth]

39. Older technology

See my append at and append 37 in this thread.

Coastie,
(PhD - University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering and MINES)

[Inland]

44. All costs need be considered.

Teh storage of nuke waste was ignored. The pollution and death from coal was ignored.

Maybe turning off a light is the easiest way. Or solar.

[davepc]

32. The real cost of coal power is the millions who die each year

from air pollution.

How many Americans and Canadians and Mexicans died this year from nuclear power?

[The Straight Story]

33. Not sure I agree with ya, but here is something on your side of it

Other Radiation Problems

The effects of routine releases of radioactivity from nuclear plants depend somewhat on how the spent fuel is handled. A typical estimate is that they may reduce our life expectancy by 15 minutes.

Potential problems from accidents in transport of radioactive materials are largely neutralized by elaborate packaging. A great deal of such transport has taken place over the past 50 years and there have been numerous accidents, including fatal ones. However, from all of these accidents combined, there is less than a 1% chance that even a single death will ever result from radiation exposure. Probabilistic risk analyses indicate that we can expect less than one death per century in U.S. from this source.

Mining uranium to fuel nuclear power plants leaves "mill tailings", the residues from chemical processing of the ore, which lead to radon exposures to the public. However, these effects are grossly over-compensated by the fact that mining uranium out of the ground reduces future radon exposures. By comparison, coal burning leaves ashes that increase future radon exposures. The all-inclusive estimates of radon effects are that one nuclear power plant operating for one year will eventually avert a few hundred deaths, while an equivalent coal burning plant will eventually cause 30 deaths.


http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

of course, they may have a stake in it all so a tad biased...

[Coastie for Truth]

37. The folks in coal country (Western PA) support nuke power

Western PA used to be where we built most of the commercial reactors and the naval reactors. And, I am proud to say that Nuclear Power Engineer Ivan Itkin was my Penneylvania Assemblyman.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

45. That doesn't even take into account...

...the number of people who suffer increased risk of cancer due to emissions from coal-fired power plants. A combination of renewables + nuclear (with nuclear to be phased out and replaced with renewables over time) seems to be the only reasonable bet to me.

[The Straight Story]

28. Waiting on someone to comment - 'well they are in a red state'

and just some rednecks...

Hard working people risking their lives so we can watch football and sit on the couch and someone will surely brush em off because they did not vote en masse the way they wanted em to.

Oh maybe no one will say it here - but each time I hear people talking about how a state full of people deserve what they get because how they voted it steams me (but then we hear the election was rigged anyway...). I am probably just as guilty as others on saying that at sometime in my posting time here, and if so - shame on me.

[Missy Vixen]

31. One of the guys in my Camp Wellstone class

is a DOL prosecutor going after mine operators for safety violations. I'm not going to post his name here because I don't have his permission to, but boy, is he doing an important job.

Go, go, go get 'em.

Julie

[Coastie for Truth]

35. Thanks - good post

My dad was born in a Consol "company town" - and was a lawyer for the UMW.

I grew up above the Consol mine -- and our garage collapsed into a sink hole above the mine. (Scared the daylights out of the dog -- she came charging through the screen door into the kitchen - pee'd on the kitchen floor, and hid under the kitchen table whimpering).

My Dad had family in Donora, PA, site of the

I remember when my wife and I bought our first house (in Western Pennsylvania) we had the standard "coal clause" in our deed--

THIS DEED MAY NOT CONVEY ANY MINERAL RIGHTS OR COAL RIGHTS AND MAY NOT CONVEY ANY RIGHTS OF LATERAL OR SUBJACENT SUPPORT

Having grown up in Coal Country - I am in favor of nuclear power -- see my append in the Energy and Environment Forum and the Scientific American Article referenced in the append - as well as some freebies on the web cited in the article and .