Families Mark One-Year Anniversary Of Utah Mine Disaster

The whole character of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster changed, for the worse, one year ago this evening.
At 6:38 p.m., without warning, the north wall of a tunnel exploded into a group of rescuers digging their way to six miners trapped by the mine's catastrophic collapse 10 days earlier. Rescuers Dale Black and Brandon Kimber were killed instantly. Gary Jensen, a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspector monitoring the operation, suffered internal injuries and died later. Six other rescuers were injured, physically and emotionally.
This horrific turn of events terminated an underground rescue fraught with setbacks from the start. And it has perpetuated doubts about whether the rescuers ever should have been exposed to such dangers given the absence of any evidence that the six now-entombed miners survived the initial implosion.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[AmandaBC]

"Families Mark One-Year Anniversary Of Utah Mine Disaster"

With balloons, flags and cheers? I doubt it. Unless the photograph shows the party thrown by the UT GOP thugs who got away with mu_rder, to celebrate their being untouchable...

[sparkey]

And still nothing has happened to the owners or to the paid off officials at the mine safety commission. Money talks and a lot of money says wait for awhile and the public will turn its attention to something else. There has been nothing on the news except the olymics. By tomorrow, this will be old news. New workers will be hired and dead workers will be forgotten. The best government that money can buy.

[Mort]

Am I missing something? The photo looks like they're celebrating the 1 year mark with balloons and a carnival atmosphere? Hmmm.....

[TXfemmom]

We now know that the owners of the mine knew from reports that it was unsafe to mine and to use the techniques they planned to use. The owner used his political power, especially via the Senator from Kentucky, to get political hacks in the mining Department to give the fastest permission on record, and to overturn the advice of the professions in the department.

If there is any justice in this country, then the owners and the political hacks who assisted them should be tried for murder, as their actions were calculated, formed with malicious disregard for human life, and with full knowledge of the possibility of loss of life. That is murder.

We have become a third world nation in respect to most things, and justice and honor do not exist within any of the branches of our government, and it has taken just eight years under Bush and first the Republican-controlled Congress and then with the turn around and let them continue destroying the country complacency of the Congress elected in 2006 with the thought that they would do something, anything to stem the tide, and they did not.

[helonias]

But wasn't fatso one of the 5 bestest Americans?

[jqcitizen]

Bob Murray, owner of the Crandall mine, said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) Kentucky, considered him one of his 5 best friends.

Murray, no doubt considered Elaine Chao (McConnells wife) HIS best friend. -As Secretary of Labor, Ms. Chao was responsible to enforce laws concerning mine safety. Obviously safety was ignored in this and other mining tragedies.

[AmandaBC]

"If there is any justice in this country, then the owners and the political hacks who assisted them should be tried for murder"

Unfortunately, "American justice" has become an oxymoron...