Once again, we see how dangerous mining can be

Underground coal mining is only one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. The death rate is higher among fishermen, loggers and structural iron workers. But those men — and the overwhelming majority are men — die in accidents that that take one or two lives at a time and rarely make headlines.

In most cases — a missing fishing boat being the exception — there is little question about the immediate fate of the worker involved in an accident. There is no rescue effort that can capture the nation’s attention for a week or more.

But when a mine collapses, the reporters and television trucks speed to the scene. The nation takes notice. Most people can only imagine the horror of camping at the mouth of a mine, waiting for days on end about the fate of a husband, son, father or brother.

And as days become weeks and hope dwindles, the nation comes to realize no one is coming out of the mine alive.

And so it is now as underground rescue efforts are abandoned with six miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. The cost of the rescue effort has been too high — not in money, but in the lost lives of three rescuers. Nine rescuers were also injured.

The miners are presumed dead. Four test holes drilled into the mountain have not detected signs of life, and have shown there is little breathable air in the mine. Still, a fifth test hole is being drilled, but unless it were to show signs that the miners have survived, no one will be going back underground. The mountain, which contains a maze of shafts, is shifting and is too unstable for crews to re-enter with anything less than concrete evidence that there are lives yet to be saved.

First funeral held

The first of the funerals for the three dead rescuers was held Tuesday, but it is possible that the six miners will never get funerals. They will be memorialized at the mouth of a sealed mine shaft. As have other mines in the past, Crandall Canyon will become a tomb.

Bob Ferriter, a former federal mine safety engineer who teaches at the Colorado School of Mines, said the events in Utah are consistent with similar disasters. The initial optimism of a rescue effort is followed by a growing sense of reality about the miners’ fate, which is then followed by recriminations and finger-pointing.

What’s most important now is a serious examination of why Crandall Canyon collapsed and whether anything could have been done to prevent it.

Deep mining will probably always be one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. But it is the responsibility of the Mine Safety and Health Administration to protect miners from unsafe conditions while they are alive and to thoroughly investigate the circumstances when they die.

This is not China, where an average of 13 miners die a day and where even now 181 miners are trapped in two mines in Shandong province that were flooded after days of heavy rains. There are no television cameras at those mines. Coverage has been limited to five paragraphs in the People’s Daily and family members have been warned not to talk about their ordeal.

Because our mine disasters are covered by the press, a whole nation cares. And because we have an open government, the results of subsequent investigations will be public.

Perhaps that’s why 49 mining deaths make for an average three days in China or a bad year in the United States.