Only one survivor in an accident that should never have happened

this is something that should NEVER have happened... the mining company has had numerous safety violations over the years, for one thing, and for anxiously waiting families and friends to be told their loved ones were alive only to be told the opposite shortly thereafter is unforgiveable...

There were angry scenes in West Virginia today after families learned that reports of the survival of 12 miners trapped in a coal mine were incorrect and only one man was alive.

Families learned of the deaths from mine officials more than three hours after state governor Joe Manchin said he had been told 12 of the miners survived the disaster. Mr Manchin described the confusion over the number of deaths as "heart-wrenching" and said it was the wrong time to blame anyone for the earlier miscommunication that only one of the miners had died.

Ben Hatfield, the chief executive officer of the International Coal Group that owns the mine, said the sole survivor of the disaster, Randal McCloy Jr, had been taken to hospital in a serious condition.

and now that bushco has virtually gutted msha, the mining company evidently chose to operate a much less than safe environment...

Time and again over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust.

[...]

In the past two years, the mine was cited 273 times for safety violations, of which about a third were classified as "significant and substantial," according to documents compiled by the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Many were for problems that could contribute to accidental explosions or the collapse of mine tunnels, records show.

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