17 Responses to “How did anyone ever deem working in this kind of place an acceptable risk?”

1. 1 Paul on August 17th, 2007 4:53 pm

   Sure.

   Let’s shut down every underground coal mine in the US, and ban the importing of deep mined coal from overseas.

   And let’s shut down the mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia before they level the state.

   No sure where the coal would come from though. Guess we have to use something else.

   Can’t use nuclear power. Too dangerous.

   Windmills are okay, as long as Teddy can’t see them from his house.

   Let’s tear down the hydroelectric dams because they’re screwing up fish migrations.

   Or maybe let’s all use a whole lot less electricity.

   Nah.

2. 2 Jill on August 17th, 2007 5:13 pm

   Paul – what are you saying? I get the hyperbole but why don’t you just say it instead? You seem to be expressing an awful lot of hostility toward the idea that the risk involved is not worth the reward, an idea I maintain. If you’re going to oppose that idea, I think you should then say that you in fact believe that these deaths and the risk of more is acceptable to you. It’s not acceptable to me.

   I’ve spent time in the hollers of Appalachia in Kentucky where kids grow up thinking it’s okay and normal to die in your 50s and get diseases related to your work and not finish school and the biggest dream is to have enough money to buy a truck to haul coal. I’ve seen and still have the pictures of the hideous landscape destroyed by reclamation.

   Are we really so uncreative and limited in our abilities to feel that we must make some segment of our population accept risks that so many others won’t?

   Please – if you are okay with the risks, then say – you are okay with the risks and deaths. Don’t get all huffy because I find the “balance” unacceptable.

3. 3 Cee Jay on August 17th, 2007 7:30 pm

   Jill,
   My grandfather and father once worked in a mine. It was a way to make a decent living for their family. Many of the jobs that people do have risks. Loggers and fishermen have a greater risk of being killed on the job than miners. Should we do without lumber and fish too? Truck drivers, roofers, farmers, window washers and iron workers-all risky jobs. We need people to do these jobs, but we need to make them as safe as possible, and the people who risk their lives for us should be fairly compensated and appreciated for the risk they take. Their families need to be cared for in the event of their death. What I find unacceptable is that a CEO of a company that is going bankrupt is making millions of dollars a year while a laborer who is risking his life is making $16 an hour, and an investor who risks his money wants a big profit but doesn’t want to share it with the person who is risking his life for it.

   I have a feeling that when the investigation of this accident is completed, we will find that the mine owners violated some important safety considerations in the name of profit. The owner himself stated that he had been fighting unionization of his mine. Several people have suggested that miners were afraid of losing their jobs if they brought safety concerns to the attention of the management. It is this abuse of power that makes unions essential, and until our government stops stacking the deck against them, we will see more accidents on the job. The rate for on the job fatalities has gone down in the United States in recent years, but that is only because many of the most dangerous jobs have been outsourced where safety standards are lower and unions are non-existent or weaker.

4. 4 Jill on August 17th, 2007 7:35 pm

   cee jay – That’s a fair presentation. Still, though, we are putting a price on life. We always put a price on life, I suppose. But it’s the profit motive driving the bargain that makes me nuts.

5. 5 Paul on August 17th, 2007 8:56 pm

   Jill:

   As I said the last time you raised this point, coal mining is far from being the most dangerous job upon which we of the white collar suburbs base our cushy lives. We express outrage over these kinds of accidents, then go grab a cold drink from the fridge, sit down in front of the computer and enjoy the air conditioning — all powered by electricity generated with coal.

   You may have visited the hollars of Appalachia, but my family has been there for over 200 years. When I was a kid in WV, a big sinkhole opened up on our property where the roof of the coal mine deep below it collapsed.

   There have been a number of members of our family killed and injured in the coal industry. My wife’s grandfather died of black lung (he’s buried at the end of the New River Gorge Bridge in WV), and he also lost an arm in a mining accident. My great uncle was crushed while coupling cars on a coal train. Tragic. But a farmer friend down the road lost a hand growing corn. He’s both management and labor — who’s to blame?

   And who knows how many thousands of chemical industry workers, for example, have been screwed up by their lifetime exposure to the stuff they make in those plants. I’m quite sure my Dad’s health problems, which showed up when he was my age, were due in part to this. At least the miners know the roof might fall. Dad never knew what kind of crap was in the air. I think his deal was much worse than the coal miners’ in that respect. But we all benefit from the stuff his employer produced.

   Coal mining is about the last decent job left in that part of the country. In fact, it’s making a comeback because the demand for coal is so high. There have been mines reopened in the valley where I grew up – mines which had been closed for over 20 years.

   Mining is certainly dangerous, but it pays well and those miners would rather go in there, knowing the risks, than work at Wal-Mart, or move somewhere else. No one forces them.

   Some mine owners make a lot of money, no question. And they lobby mightily in Congress and the state legislatures to get all the breaks they can. So does the UAW. In the end, the owners, miners and politicians figure out a deal that everyone accepts. I don’t know that it’s our business to interfere except to the extent we have a say in the protection of the environment (PLEASE stop Mountaintop Removal Mining!).

   But don’t express outrage until you acknowledge that you play a part in putting the miner in there.

   I think that blaming the situation on the mine owners and miners is like blaming vice on pimps and hookers. They play a part, but there would be no business without the Johns.

   PL

6. 6 Jill on August 17th, 2007 9:02 pm

   Now come on, Paul – be fair. You know or should know that I’m not “blaming the situation on the mine owners and miners.” I’m saying, as I often do, that all of our wants and desires perpetuate a system of how we provide what we want that has some really offensive parts to it. I’ve never said that I believe I’m blameless and if it makes you feel better, of course I know I’m not blameless but I’ve never pretended to be Al Gore or whomever Al Gore thinks he is. So come on – you’ve read enough of this blog to know that I often question and express frustration with or upsetment over large, societal situations that cause or create suffering that seems as though it should be insufferable.

   This discussion – your contributions, cee jays, and others, is really important to figuring out what can we shoulder, what should we shoulder and who should shoulder how much, and when and at what cost.

   Those are the points I intended/hoped to raise with the post. Much to my surprise, as often happens, the post has done that – I see that as a good thing.

7. 7 Paul on August 17th, 2007 9:25 pm

   And to your comment: “I think you should then say that you in fact believe that these deaths and the risk of more is acceptable to you”

   What I accept is that the miners who take that risk are doing so of their own free will. If they don’t like it, they can quit going in the mines and find another job. If enough miners do this, the mine owners are out of business.

   Are you saying miners are so stupid they can’t make a valid decision, and others have to make it for them? That’s pretty insulting. My experience is that miners come from pretty rugged stock. If they did all quit mining and the power grid were shut down, they would be the ones to survive, not the city dwellers and suburbanites.

   Doing a little googling, it doesn’t look like underground mining is even one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, you are more likely to die from an assault by a co-worker than die in a mine.

   It’s more dangerous for the divers to recover bodies in Minneapolis than it was to cross the bridge. For sure there’s no one alive in the river at this point — why do we allow the divers to risk their lives just to recover a dead, and now decomposed, body? Why do we value our dead more than the living in cases like this?

   Does it make a difference if the divers are in private business vs being members of the city’s public safety department? Is it better if they’re volunteers doing it for nothing?

   PL

8. 8 Paul on August 17th, 2007 9:34 pm

   And maybe one of the ways our minds work differently is that I don’t want to hear about complaints unless the complainer is willing to do something about it.

   Like the rule we had in our Boy Scout troop – if you bitched about the food, you had to cook the next meal.

   So I accept that writing about this stuff is good, because the debate generates ideas and solutions. But the debate isn’t enough – you have to actually do something.

   That’s why I’m running for school board this fall – if I can get the 150 signatures required for the petition (3x of that required to run for Mayor!).

   PL

9. 9 Jill on August 17th, 2007 9:34 pm

   Paul – where do you see me saying or suggesting that miners are stupid? Come on.

   Of course it’s a choice. Of course they can choose. Really – you are being uncharacteristically (in my experience anyway) unfair to what I’m writing – and you know how specific I try to be with my words.

   Where we are (we meaning globally not you and me) with this situation is not unlike so many other things driven by our ability to create: we discover, we create, we innovate, we invent. But we’re not very good at restraining ourselves – at least some of us (again, globally, generally, not necessarily you or me) when we realize that maximizing what we want for ourselves requires depreciating or destroying or subjecting others’ lives to conditions many people wouldn’t accept.

   This imbalance is a real problem for me – it always has been. This is nothing new at all for me, in terms of what I find disturbing in our world.

   Same thing with Rupert Murdoch – why did he want WSJ? Because he wanted it – period. I have NO ability to understand that. Same thing with David Brennan – why isn’t he like John Zitzner who runs EPrep here in Cleveland, a very successful charter that is a nonprofit. Why must Brennan be so driven by the money that he can’t run schools that excel and follow the laws etc etc?

   I need to stop writing and tend to my Shabbat preparations, but I do think there’s a far larger sociological issue related to how these situations bother me.

   It is NOT about the miners, the owners or their intelligence. For me, it’s just much bigger. I’m sorry if I’m not articulating it well.

10. 10 redhorse on August 17th, 2007 9:40 pm

    he’s buried at the end of the New River Gorge Bridge in WV

    No *%#(? How does one get the honor of resting there?

    And yes, mountaintop removal needs to end, not only b/c it’s unsightly (it is), but b/c the soil becomes unstable (it does) and the water poisoned from the runoff (kills everything in sight). Mountaintop removal, quite simple, horribly effects entire watersheds.

    Jill, I’m going to side with Paul here, albeit (I think) differently: I didn’t read your post title as a real question, but one that you had an answer for already. Perhaps that’s not fair.

    Fact is, there are a ton of dangerous jobs out there. For the most part, they are necessary. The only thing that pisses me off is when a business owner knowingly shorts his/her employees’ safety. That’s unacceptable.

    Some of us sit in nice, comfy, climate controlled offices all day only to rat race bumper to bumper at 80mph all the way home. Are those jobs safe b/c they involve potential death only during the commute?

    I remember waking up in the night as a kid when a power plant explosion would shake the house. There’s nothing much to do then but wait for a call saying Grandpa was at home, or at least not at the plant.

    The wait sucked and the aftermath for others was worse. But his job was good, the pay was good, and in the end, all of his kids and grandkids were successful in large part because he never worried about job security.

    Looking back now in an economy that values mobility, both the employer and employee, job security, even in a dangerous profession, seems so quaint.

11. 11 Paul on August 18th, 2007 12:11 am

    Redhorse:

    He’s not buried literally at the end of the bridge, but rather in their family cemetery that today is adjacent to the visitor center. Their farm, if you can call it that, was near where the bridge piers set. My mother-in-law used to walk all the way down to the bottom of the gorge every day to catch the train (at Fayette Station) into Charleston, and then make the walk back up the hill when she got off the train in the evening. She said she could have walked on the winding coal truck road up from the bottom (aka US19), but that took too long so she usually just walked pretty much straight up the hill. Tough old bird she was.

    Unions certainly have a role in protecting worker safety, and giving the workers power in the collective bargaining arena. But there’s a saying that everything worth doing is worth doing to excess, and the unions are unquestionably guilty of that.

    Is the death of US heavy industry the fault of greedy shareholders, inept management, unreasonable unions, crooked politicians, or public apathy?

    All of the above…

    PL

12. 12 Jill on August 18th, 2007 1:46 am

    Red – yes, you are right – the question asked is rhetorical one, for me. I’m not saying for anyone else. I’m expressing how the situation makes me feel. And I question how we, as a people, have decided that it is in fact okay and preferable. Wasn’t there possibly a sliding door somewhere where we could have chosen some alternatives that would have been less risky? How much do we need, of anything?

    Consumption for consumptions sake, that drives others into risky situations, to feed the consumption, makes me crazy. My expression of how nuts it makes me isn’t meant to imply that I therefore think mining should be banished. Few things are black and white for me like that.

    But I ask the question, even rhetorically, to force the re-evaluation of the risk assumed, particularly by those who shoulder the biggest burden of loss.

    This questioning wasn’t meant to insult anyone or imply that anyone was stupid – or anything like that. I know you know me well enough to know that’s not and almost never where I’m going.

    I WANT TO KNOW, in the epistomological sense, why – why do we CHOOSE such paths?

13. 13 Jill on August 18th, 2007 1:47 am

    Paul, can’t it be all of the above and then some? That’s what I would answer.

14. 14 redhorse on August 18th, 2007 3:04 am

    Paul:
    I’ve been there a handful of times and I’m almost certain I know the road you speak of. The Gorge is one of my two favorite spots in the state; the other is a little cabin on the Cheat that I’ve rented before. There’s nothing quite like falling asleep in a porch chair with the Cheat rushing 50 ft away.

    Jill:
    Yes, I know that you’re not implying anyone is stupid or lazy or some other pejorative.

    Your question, then, is about technology. I’m not an expert, but I’d guess in the grand scheme: coal mining is an acceptable risk b/c it’s cheaper than the alternatives and the market won’t bear the expense of those alternatives.

    It’s that simple.

    As for the Utah incident, I don’t know about the local fault lines or the owner any more than what I’ve read. If he put people in unnecessarily high risk situations b/c, well, b/c he could, then bleed him dry and give the proceeds to the families.

    But if not, then we’re back to the risk assessment, and frankly, Americans aren’t going to stomach higher energy costs [particularly when they're already soaring] just to keep miners out of the earth.

15. 15 Jill on August 18th, 2007 3:09 pm

    RH: But cheaper HOW? In what way is it cheaper? We will pay less with dollars so the cost of coal is cheaper in that way? Why aren’t we measuring it in life?

    Now, for example, we know that the human cost of nuclear energy can be high if the provision can’t run perfectly – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. So in these instances, we’re saying that more human life will suffer and suffer more than we want to risk.

    But still we get back to the question of consumption.

    I need to write a post on what I thought about as I listened to this report today, and the transcript isn’t yet available, but I would urge you and Paul and anyone else who is interested in this discussion to listen to it:

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12899511

    What struck me and still stands out for me as I listen to the story is the following:

    who needs these developments? did someone actually NEED these places to live? or are we building just because they are there? did someone NEED the coal, or, now, as it sounds, is the coal needed because the developers developed land that didn’t need to be developed to fulfill anyone’s basic needs?

    This is what I’m talking about.

    We create these needs that aren’t necessary all in the name of profit.

    At a certain point, I simply fail to understand such drives.

16. 16 N=1 on August 20th, 2007 5:48 pm

    The Pump Handle blog is an excellent resource for mine safety and worker safety descriptions and analysis, as well as for public health issues in general.

17. 17 [update] Congress recommends criminal inquiry into Crandall Canyon collapse, local energy company | Writes Like She Talks on May 9th, 2008 8:39 am

    [...] of money to Republicans in Ohio’s legislature. Here’s a post about that money flow, and here’s a post about the mine [...]

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