Mine Owner’s Negligence Led to Blast, Study Finds
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT
WASHINGTON — In the first comprehensive state report on the 2010 coal mine disaster in West Virginia, an independent team of investigators has put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine, Massey Energy, concluding that it had “made life difficult” for miners who tried to address safety and built “a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable.”
The report, released on Thursday by an independent team appointed by former Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and led by J. Davitt McAteer, a former federal mine safety chief, echoed preliminary findings by federal officials that the blast could have been prevented if Massey had observed minimal safety standards.
But it was more pointed in naming Massey as the culprit, using blunt language to describe what it said was a pattern of negligence that ultimately led to the deaths of 29 miners on April 5, 2010, in the worst American mining disaster in 40 years.
“The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris,” the report concluded. “A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coal fields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk taking.”
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — In the first comprehensive state report on the 2010 coal mine disaster in West Virginia, an independent team of investigators has put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine, Massey Energy, concluding that it had “made life difficult” for miners who tried to address safety and built “a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable.”
The report, released on Thursday by an independent team appointed by former Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and led by J. Davitt McAteer, a former federal mine safety chief, echoed preliminary findings by federal officials that the blast could have been prevented if Massey had observed minimal safety standards.
But it was more pointed in naming Massey as the culprit, using blunt language to describe what it said was a pattern of negligence that ultimately led to the deaths of 29 miners on April 5, 2010, in the worst American mining disaster in 40 years.
“The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris,” the report concluded. “A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coal fields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk taking.”
(More here.)
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