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?
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.