Looks like about 30-35 per year.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=1190
Posted on 02/01/2006 3:20:06 PM PST by EBH
Governor Joe Manchin is calling for a mine safety stand down. It's a call for a cease of production which means all safety procedures must be thoroughly reviewed before production continues.
The announcement follows the deaths of two coal miners in three separate incidents today in West Virginia.
"Mine companies, supervisors and the miners themselves are to engage in a thorough review of safety procedures before any work or production is to continue," says Governor Manchin in a Wednesday afternoon press conference.
Massey Energy is confirming one death at its Black Castle surface mine in Boone County Wednesday afternoon. That death after a natural gas explosion and fire above-ground.
Another coal miner was killed in the Long Branch Energy Number 18 Mine near Danville in a ribfall underground accident.
The deaths bring the death toll in coal mining accidents up to 16 so far this year in West Virginia. Thursday marks one month since the Sago Mine Disaster where 12 coal miners were killed.
This certainly doesn't look good, given that Canadian miners seem to have a much longer lifespan.
Yikes. How many mining deaths are there in a year on average?
Prayers for all of them.
Moderator. Please delete post,
Already posted about a minute ago.
I think it's time to crack some heads in the Mining industry.
Now I get the words to the song...
...almost heaven, West Virginia....
(that was bad, huh?)
During the same period, how many have died in drunken traffic crashes?
How many in other types of tragedy?
How is it that we suddenly become superstitious about one type if event when other types of events have greater impact and we should be paying attention to them?
I was on scene at the black castle mine earlier today. I was there taking photos for the local paper. The person killed there was operating a bulldozer, and accidentally hit an exposed natural gas line. The explosion blew him off the dozer, and he died of severe burns.
This was a surface mine.
They didnt get the victim off the site until several hours later, because it was at such a remote location.
I dont know anything about the other accident site, other than it was an underground mine, and the dead miner was the father of two.
Looks like about 30-35 per year.
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=1190
Western, strip-mined coal, is the best alternative. However, thanks in large part to Robert KKK Byrd, environmental regulations requiring power plants, in the east, to use scrubbers, makes the eastern, deep-mined, coal just as attractive.
If we are going to start a witch hunt re mine safety, we should put everything on the table, and lay the blame where it falls. There is no supply problem with western coal, only the thinking of the power companies that, if we have to have scrubbers, we had might as well buy the high-sulphur eastern coal.
Aside from putting a lot of miners out of work, there is no downside to shutting down every mine in W.V. The political dynamics, though, will dictate blaming the big, bad mining companies for all these recent deaths.
It isn't that it isn't a risky occupation, it is that we have 24 hours X 7 days a week of cable news time to fill.
Underground coal mining is far more dangerous than hard-rock mining by its very nature -- since the material being extracted in a coal mine serves as its own fuel when ignited, and can be explosive under certain conditions.
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