The accident in Utah & the closure of the Bureau of Mines

My father is leaving for Crandall Canyon to help with the rescue effort. I'm a little distraught at the moment, so the clarity of the following might be sub par, but here's what I know about the situation…

The cause of this accident was poor judgment and poor oversight. In the words of an expert "They had no business doing what they were doing in that mine." Murray pressured his engineers into giving him the green light to mine more coal than can be done safely, but the full cause of this accident goes far beyond Bob Murray. Bush's secretary of labor is corporate hoar, who doesn't give half a fuck about worker safety. She let Murray get away with anything because of his donations to the Republican Party, and now at least 3 people are dead because of it, possibly 9. Capitalists will be capitalists, it's up to the government to stop them for killing and destroying things for money; that's what law is for. When capitalists aren't bound by law they will inevitably put profit ahead of lives. That's what wrong with our medical system and that's what went wrong at mine. The Republicans aren't adequately controlling the capitalists to keep them from hurting people and destroying themselves as capitalism will ultimately do.

Ten years ago Newt Gingrich & the republican congress shut down or defunded the Bureau of Mines (USBM), a part of the department of the interior, responsible for mine safety research. Previously the government had taken a carrot and stick approach to mine safety by doing safety research themselves (through the USBM) and using MSHA to enforce safety regulations. Now with the Bureau of Mines gone, mine safety has been deteriorating, and catastrophic mine accidents are becoming common place. In the words of the Director Gram "The abolition of the U.S. Bureau of Mines brings to a close 85 years of commitment to improving the health and safety of the Nation's miners."
That commitment is clearly dead and buried with bodies of too many American miners and rescue workers who've died since the bureau was shut down. Another report discusses how the USBM was working on developing safety technologies that could have prevented many of the recent mine tragedies,

"HEALTH, SAFETY AND MINING TECHNOLOGY

The Health, Safety and Mining Technology (HSMT) program pursues fundamental scientific and engineering research in order to provide new technology to protect the Nation's miners, who are employed in one of the most hazardous of all occupations. Injuries and occupational diseases to workers are costly to the Nation in terms of compensation costs to current and future generations, economic growth in the raw materials sector of the economy, and the Nation's industrial competitiveness.

The research program focuses on solutions to the health and safety hazards that confront miners and other workers in the mineral sector of the economy, including exposure to dust, falls of roof, proximity to large equipment in confined space, and the potential for fires and explosions. This program also concentrates on long-range activities to devise new mining concepts that will safeguard miners with mechanisms that rapidly warn of, or suppress, hazards in advance of mining, thus enhancing productivity. Implicit in this program is the conservation of natural resources and environmental protection. The HSMT program is divided into seven research areas: Occupational Health, Ground Control, Human Factors, Mine Safety Systems, Mine Disaster Prevention, and Advanced Mining Systems.

Ground Control

The long-range goal of the Ground Control program is to produce technology to forecast impending catastrophic failure, maintain structurally sound and stable mine openings, and reduce injuries and fatalities caused by ground failure. The objectives of the Ground Control program include:

oDetermining the critical geological and geophysical criteria to be used to identify potentially unstable and hazardous zones in mines.

oDeveloping and demonstrating mine-wide monitoring systems to collect and analyze critical geomechanical and geophysical parameters in real time.

oDeveloping artificial support technology to enhance stability of the mine roof.

Enhanced efficiency in achieving Ground Control goals has occurred through consolidation of ground control technologies from two distinct, yet integrated, Ground Control subprograms-- geosensing and geocontrol. Technical products used within the geosensing subprogram will be integrated into operating systems to help miners detect imminent ground failures during active mining and delineate the structural and dynamic characteristics of the rock mass to allow implementation of effective controls. The geocontrol subprogram will focus on providing engineering solutions to mitigate or eliminate identified ground hazards.

Mine Safety Systems

The Mine Safety Systems program addresses the hazards to mine workers created by the operation and design of the physical systems that make up a modern mining operation. Today's mine is a very complex operation with large excavation equipment, fastmoving haulage vehicles, conveyor and hoist systems, high-voltage machinery, complex ventilation schemes, and sophisticated control and monitoring systems. Despite all of this mechanization, the mine worker is still the essential component in any mining operation. When these workers operate and interact with the mining machines in the harsh environments of underground or surface mines they are exposed to many hazards. These hazards historically are a factor in 55 percent of all mining fatalities and 25 percent of all mining injuries. To solve this problem, new technologies will be developed and applications of existing technologies will be pursued to remove or mitigate the safety hazard. The objectives of the Mine Safety Systems program are--

oTo reduce injuries resulting from mobile powered-haulage and transport equipment through modification of existing systems and the design of inherently safer systems.

oTo improve safety in the use of high-voltage power systems.

oTo reduce the injuries associated with the use and maintenance of the mechanical systems used in mines.

Mine Disaster Prevention

In mining, no other accident can have broader consequences than those involving fires, explosions, or outbursts of methane gas. Research under the Mine Disaster Prevention program strives to develop technologies and strategies that will either prevent the occurrence of these mine emergencies or enable miners to survive them. The program focuses on the avoidance or elimination of fires and explosions through early detection, containment, and suppression; the prediction, measurement, and removal of dangerous methane accumulations; the development of protective breathing equipment and efficient escape tactics; and the safe and optimal use of explosives. The objectives of the Mine Disaster Prevention program are to--

oDiminish mine worker exposure and vulnerability to the hazardous circumstances associated with fires and explosions.

oDesign reliable life-support apparatus and escape strategies for safe, expedient evacuation from mine emergencies.

oControl hazardous methane accumulations in all phases of underground mining.

oFurther the generation of safe and effective blasting practices and products for mining."

All the deaths which occurred in that mine were needless and preventable. The blood of these rescue workers is on the hands of Newt Gingrich, who single handily shut down the Bureau of Mines with a number of back handed political maneuvers. I propose we renew our commitment to our nations miners by refunding the Bureau of Mines (which continues to exist as a statutory agency with zero funding) to prevent similar tragedies in the future.