Utah Mine Collapse Update

What a tragedy, my prayers are with the families

So sad...my heart goes out to the miners' loved ones...they must be going through sheer hell.

thank you again Diana for the update....I am worried that they cannot hear sounds but that doesn't mean the miners have not moved to another part of the mine. My prayers go out to the families...thank you again so much for this update. I hope your next one will be filled with fantastic news!

I'm praying for their well being. I hope they are safe & waiting for rescue.

My thoughts and prayers are with the miners and their families. I hope they can reach them soon. The wait must be agonizing for all involved.

The Associated Press has reported the name of the sixth missing miner - Luis Hernandez.

Thanks for paying attention.

Thank you for the updates. I'm glad the sixth miner has a name, and I am praying they all survive.

It is truly a horrific story. I wonder if they can release microphones if there isn't a way to release oxygen?

great article

Thanks for reading about this.

Gretchen, that's a very good question. My understanding is that if the rescuers could actually locate these men, they could send in a number of things.

Unfortunately, at this point no carbon dioxide has been detected in the places where rescuers have tested. This means that noone is breathing out - but the mine is a big place. I'm still pulling for these guys.

Thank you for the updated information! Pray!!!!!!

Slipping below 50-50 but that leaves a lot of room, still, for hope....

Thanks, David. Still hoping...

Reuters reports three Indiana miners killed in an accident yesterday at the Gibson County Coal Company mine.

Think about these six men, and the thousands of others, who have been involved in mining disasters throughout our history - think about them in connection with the electricity we use.

As tragic as these events are, they are not the most tragic story behind the coal industry. This is an example:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/166/

An excerpt: Just down the mountain from Larry Gibson's home, in the town of Rock Creek, stands the Marsh Fork Elementary School. Back in 2004, Ed Wiley, a forty-seven-year-old West Virginian who spent years working on strip mines, was called by the school to come pick up his granddaughter Kayla because she was sick. "She had a real bad color to her," Wiley told me. The next day the school called again because Kayla was ill, and the day after that. Wiley started flipping through the sign-out book and found that fifteen to twenty students went home sick every day because of asthma problems, severe headaches, blisters in their mouths, constant runny noses, and nausea. In May 2005, when Mountain Justice volunteers started going door-to-door in an effort to identify citizens' concerns and possibly locate cancer clusters, West Virginia activist Bo Webb found that 80 percent of parents said their children came home from school with a variety of illnesses. The school, a small brick building, sits almost directly beneath a Massey Energy subsidiary's processing plant where coal is washed and stored. Coal dust settles like pollen over the playground. Nearly three billion gallons of coal slurry, which contains extremely high levels of mercury, cadmium, and nickel, are stored behind a 385-foot-high earthen dam right above the school.

In 1972, a similar coal impoundment dam collapsed at Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, killing 125 people. Two hundred and eighty children attend the Marsh Fork Elementary School. It is unnerving to imagine what damage a minor earthquake, a heavy flash flood, or a structural failure might do to this small community. And according to documents that longtime activist Judy Bonds obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the pond is leaking into the creek and groundwater around the school. Students often cannot drink from the water fountains. And when they return from recess, their tennis shoes are covered with black coal dust.

In his PBS special, "Is God Green," Bill Moyers covers this aspect of the coal industry. Not only have thousands of miners' lives been lost, but tens of thousands of lives have been adversely affected. A short excerpt (click on Watch "Is God Green" - then on Chapter 2):

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/index.html

Steve, those are excellent links. Thanks for your input. I think it's time to ask whether the benefits of coal mining truly outweigh the risks.

And to top it off, the burning of coal is a key element of the global warming disaster. While natural gas is almost carbon free, gasoline has a higher content of carbon, and coal is almost pure carbon. It is a key component to our infrastructure of electricity generation, but there is no future in using coal unless we could find some means of burying the CO2 deep underground where it would not join the layer in the atmosphere.
So not only does coal mining take lives today, but it threatens the future of our grandchildren.

Chris. Even if there is a way to "sequester" carbon from coal, the procurement of coal is also a disaster. See the Orion article linked above.

Lovins has presented a strategy for transfering our economy to hydrogen by 2050.

Winning the oil endgame

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Oil-Endgame-Amory-Lovins/dp/1881071103/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1692228-2284715?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186972126&sr=1-1

Diana: "I think it's time to ask whether the benefits of coal mining truly outweigh the risks."

Lovins has an interesting comment re: the future of coal in this interview:

Grist: Will Big Coal fall on its face?

Amory Lovins: It's already clearly happening in the global marketplace -- although the U.S. lags a bit, having rather outmoded energy institutions and rules. Worldwide, less than half of new electrical services are coming from new central power plants. Over half are coming from micropower and negawatts, and that gap is rapidly widening. The revolution already happened -- sorry if you missed it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19995726/

Thanks for the info. I hadn't followed this story at all.

I guess it's not a very popular story partly because these kinds of accidents are actually fairly common. To me, that makes it an even bigger story.

Diana: "I guess it's not a very popular story...."

It's been on CNN and MSNBC almost continually. These mining disasters tend to be covered extensively. On the other hand, mountain top mining, with all of its tragedies - well, I've never seen it covered in the mainstream media.

Thanks, Steve. I did see a very brief update on CNN today and note that the "Anderson Cooper 360" show will focus on the tragedy during its program hour this evening.

I turned the television on specifically during lunch for news and did get that much. Admittedly, I don't have the television on very much.

I concur about mountaintop mining - I haven't heard anything about that kind of disaster ever (and I'm no spring chicken!).

mountaintop mining is back east in West Virginia. Instead of making a shaft they just knock the top off a mountain. it's messy, But profitable. And if you don't happen to live there, hey, what's the harm?
Somebody else does live there, of course.

Don't get me going...

Chris: "And if you don't happen to live there, hey, what's the harm?"

Exactly my point, here:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977083964