We Need More OSHA Protection, Inspection & Enforcement

Editorial: The Disastrous Lessons of Sago

The Sago Mine disaster that resulted in 12 deaths is ample illustration that we need more protections coming out of OSHA and other regulatory agencies involved in making our workplaces safer. While business need the room to be adaptable to the business environment, we need to assure that workers--the backbone of any legitimate business enterprise--are protected. We have a poor history of protecting workers in this nation. It is only in that last 70 years or so that worker safety was really given any attention at all. Now we seem to be on the backslide allowing corporations to get away with endangering workers, infringing upon their rights and leaving holes in our society. It's just plain wrong.

West Virginia’s official inquiry into the Sago mine disaster that took 12 lives last January could not have been more brutally conclusive: “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” The 97-page report enumerated a dozen lethal factors, beginning with the unconscionable delay in organizing a rescue party that did not reach the miners until almost two days after an explosion trapped them. That was scandalous enough. But the methane pocket that set off the blast in an abandoned shaft had never been effectively sealed off, since the company had cut corners with inadequate foam-block seals.

Down below, faulty breathing masks sped the demise of the workers as they wrote farewell notes and prayed. Up above, better communications and tracking gear could have saved the men. The company had more apparent say in the rescue than supposed government protectors.

The report amounts to an action agenda for reforming the withered state of mine safety. It begins with recommendations for better communications and breathing equipment that’s already available. It calls on government to force the industry to use some of its booming profits to install refuge chambers in underground mines.

Existing law that methane pockets have seals able to contain explosions clearly was not a priority at Sago, where the inquiry found “catastrophic failure.” The federal mine safety agency is promising to require stronger concrete seals. But the industry’s rising death tally has underlined the shortcomings of that agency, bedeviled with patronage appointees from the coal industry and the loss of scores of safety inspectors to save money.

The ultimate challenge of the Sago report is to the political powers. They must show the courage to look beyond their obeisance to the coal industry and make the lives of miners the highest priority.