Officials from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration say two workers were trapped and killed in an accident at a West Virginia coal mine.
Amy Louviere of the agency told The Associated Press in an email Tuesday morning that a ground failure occurred at the mine around 8:30 p.m. Monday. She says the miners' bodies have been recovered, and personnel from the agency are on the site.
Brody Mine No. 1 in Boone County is owned by St. Louis-based Patriot Coal.
You may of course remember 'Patriot' Coal as being the assholes who dumped 100,000+ gallons of coal ash into West Virginia waterways.
On Tuesday, a malfunctioning valve in an eight-inch pipeline operated by the Patriot Coal Corp. 16 miles south of Charleston, West Virginia, sent what one state official called a "significant" amount of toxic coal slurry into a local creek. Another official, however, said of the spill, "I don't think there's really anything to it. It turned out to be much of nothing." Later in the day, it was announced that as much as 108,000 gallons of the stuff had leaked
Even the FOX News article linked first in this diary points out the complete disregard for safety that Patriot Coal has shown:
The station reported that the mine had received 253 "significant and substantial" violations from the U.S. government's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) during a 12-month review which ended last August.
The MSHA report says the violations show the mine had a disregard for the health and safety of its miners at the time the violations were issued.
This is all pretty ironic considering the first thing I encountered on their
website was a large graphic proclaiming how all accidents are preventable.