Talk:12 coal miners are found dead, 1 in critical condition, in West Virginia mine

The town is not called Sago; there is no Sago, WV. See here for more info. -Etoile

Has anyone checked International Coal Group's safety record? IowaEye 08:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

From 2006 Sago Mine disaster:

In 2005 the mine was cited by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) 208 times for violating regulations, up from 68 in 2004. Of those, 96 were considered significant and substantial. Similarly, West Virginia's Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training issued 144 citations over that year, up from 74 the previous year.

Some of those were for violations that could have had been factors in the accident, such as failure to control methane and coal-dust accumulation, failure to properly shore up shafts against collapse and overall deficiencies in emergency planning.

MSHA records also showed miners at Sago had suffered 42 injuries that resulted in lost work time since 2000. In 2004 the mine's injury rate for hours worked was nearly three times the national average. A neighbor of one of the trapped miners told the media that the man had recently expressed concern that he could be killed "because of the idiots at the mine."

Kitts noted that most of the safety violations occurred early in the year and were addressed through providing better equipment and training. He said that MSHA could easily have closed the mine if it were deemed truly unsafe.

Some have suggested that the severity of the accident's aftermath was caused in part by inadaquate safety standards endorsed by the MSHA under David Lauriski, who was George W. Bush's appointment to head the agency. Among other problems, they cite the rejection of a proposed standard, "Escapeways and Refuges", by Lauriski's administration, which would have provided for additional escape routes for trapped miners.

Theshibboleth 11:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Title Length
Title is too long. Not punchy enough. You could have cut out '1 in critical condition'.

Interwiki
You should to remove the interwiki sv because it is already linked by 13 coal miners trapped in West Virginia mine. Thank you. --Trek00 07:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 07:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)