Today another coal mining incident happened in north Mexico..66 miners are now trapped with limited means of oxygen and God knows what. Sorry..couldnt get the link to work, but its on the yahoo news now.

Anyways, I want to clarify a few things about this post first. Im not of the prescence of mind to think that there is something 'going on' down there, and secondly I have a genuine concern because my Father is a coal miner  in West Virginia.

I know the media loves to hype it, but could there be something to this? I don't belive in tinfoil crap, but damnit there seems to be alot of this going down just this year yet.

Dad says this stuff happens more than you think, but for some reason other than the Pennsylvania accident a few years ago, I really cant recall these things..btw I'm 34 and Dad has been a miner since I was 6. Also not a knock at all on non-union mines (which he is union) but he says more of these deals happens to the non-union shops.

I'm just a typical guy on here I think like most, that revere their fathers and hope nothing bad will ever come their way..So what say you?

I read an article today that mentioned the number of violations in the Sago mine comparted to the union mines around the area. Many of the union mines had as much as 6 times more violations than Sago did. The union being better is BS.

The fact that my uncles crew made it out of the mine that day is a testament to the safety of that mine. The explosion happend 1000' from them and was not further fueled by coal dust kicked up by the explosion because the mine had plenty of rock dust in place. The explosion occured BEHIND a permanently sealed off portion of the mine.

One thing about mines is the cold weather increases the methane buildup due to the temps and barometric pressure changes.

I hope the Mexician miners are rescued. It is a rough life for any miner, union or not.

It is a rough life for any miner, union or not.

You got that right. My Dad has busted up both knees and who knows what has gotten lodged in his lungs from all those years down there.  Just going by what he said about the non-union shops, not exactly an expert on the whole mining scene myself.

On a side note, I got to go down to my Dad's mine when he was in Meigs County, Ohio..Meigs Mine 31 back in oh I'd say 94 or 95. We got a quick safety drill on the equipment we were issued and went down this shaft maybe close to 200 feet deep. Then got on this buggy and went back to the longwall close to a mile and a half back in where he did alot of work. AMAZING! That shit is the darkest dark you have ever seen..I turned my headlamp off in a couple spots and it was spooky.

First out of 3 generations from both sides of my family NOT to be a coalminer. My Dad made sure of that.

Coal mining is a dangerous occupation. Just look at the MSHA web site.  There are alot of fatal mining accidents every year.

This year is worse than usual. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in the mining industry. Tracking devices, safe rooms, etc.

They should pay these guys more money and learn from these tragedies.

Sometimes unlikely events happen closely together.  The Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987 and again in 1991.  What are the chances of that happening?  No Apocalypse followed (apart from the election of Clinton in 1992).

GunLvr

Union vs non-union accident rates are comparable.  Mining in the US is actually pretty safe.  Now if you go to a "developing" nation.......well, there is a reason it is called the third world.

SRM

Mining is dangerous no matter where you are.
The media makes a big deal out of it when they don't have real news to report.
The Sargo mine had problems, but mine does'nt .
Grandpa was a miner, he was a mechanic. and he had half of a stomach from a jack. ad he stayed above ground.
These things happen every day around the world. But the media wants to make a GWB fault.

Maybe you simply haven't noticed other articles, I've read a few from china in recent years also. Seems they have bigger accidents more often.

goods read on coal from march national geographic

www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0603/feature4/index.html

www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0603/feature5/index.html


The article's about how coal is becoming big again, and I would guess with the recent oil situations they will pour more $s into developing it as an even more usable energy source.
It said u.s. has the most natural coal available, and then china, but china has the greatest demand for it, u.s. demand for it 2nd. China's demand for it will exceed it's resources when their population increases more.
Also had an article about mountain top mining in southern wv. It's a big thing here, basically because while an effective way of mining the coal not only ruins the land but ruins mainly the water
for the people and towns below and it makes for bad flooding. With all the trees gone there isn't anything to stop the rain run off and the draws and valleys have violent flash flooding.
About 4 years ago 2 summers in a row, heavy summer rains flooded out towns in mcdowell county, 1 small town was washed away, 8 or 9 lives were lost, but it didn't really seem to be national news then. Now someone's $200,000 house in las alamos nm is threatened by fires, that's ongoing national news, the situation in the coal fields, local wv news.
Maybe it would be different with the mining incidents on people's minds.

That said, mountain top removal is overall a safer way of mining the coal than going underground.



These recent incdients are small in comparisom to mining accidents of the past, were it wasn't uncommon for 100 or so people to perish, back in the coal boom days.......

Quoted: Media hype I think, along with some liberal Bush bashing. The moonbats are blaming Bush for the mine accidents, like they blame him for everything else. I heard a radio personality last week, think it was Larry Elder, citing the number of mine accident deaths over the last decade or so. It was about the same every year, except a few of the years during Clinton's presidency were a little high. Reminds me of media reports on shark attacks a number of years ago had people in a frenzy. The number of attacks hadn't gone up, but the media hyped it up and had people scared to go in the water.

YEP!, Shark attacks were actually down from previous years but the fucking media wouldn't report that.

Coal prices are way up and they are mining as much coal as possible. Muntain top removal is good but you can only move so much rock above the coal and still be profitable. Plus they ALWAYS have to fight the stupid fucking tree-huggers to get a new project started. In southern WV the best damn thing you could do would be flatten some of the ground down there.

We are fortunate that we have laws in the US to help protect our workers. Hell, it seems like China has 80 or so miners killed every few months.