A Grimm Take on Sago

Fred Grimm, in The Miami Herald, on the tardy realization that he and other journalists were unwitting parrots for mining companies, like International Coal, who insist that making mines safer will make energy more expensive for all of us. Grimm's recognition here--for which he should be credited--is compromised a bit, however, by his reluctance to ask us or himself if the original version of the Sago story--"this is the tragic price we pay for cheap energy"--is really (really) one with which we're willing to live. At first, I didn't even know he was serious about this.

Those first press dispatches out of Sago carried a sense of inevitability. As if, given the inherent dangers of coal mining, we must be willing to accept the occasional disaster.

Twelve miners were offered up to the outside world like a bill come due.

Miners readily talked about the risk they assume when they go underground. Others noted the region's long, brutal history of mine tragedies, from 3,242 miners dying on the job in 1907 to 22 losses in 2005.

A theme developed: Coal mining deaths are an unavoidable byproduct of our need for cheap energy.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration's website encouraged this notion that bad things happen to good mines, citing an ``aggressive inspection and enforcement record at Sago Mine.''

GULLIBLE MEDIA

Hey, most of us in the press bought into it. And the company's possible culpability was overshadowed in those first few days because of the operator's stunning public relations error: telling the miners' families that 12 men had survived down in that hole, then waiting three hours to fix the mistake.

Besides, it would have been difficult hanging responsibility for the mine explosion on the new owners of Sago Mine Number One.

New York billionaire Wilbur Ross and his International Coal Operators took it over only on Nov. 18. Company officials kept telling reporters last week that while the mine had suffered safety problems in the past, the new ownership had been working hard to turn things around.

Actually, Ross had been buying stock in the Anker Coal Group since 1999. The Charleston Gazette sifted through state records and discovered that Ross had gained controlling interest in Anker, with 47 percent of the stock, in 2001. The Gazette reported that state records reveal that the so-called change of ownership in November did not bring new management to the coal mine.

Then, on Tuesday, MSHA released mine inspection records that indicate that the inevitability of a disaster may have been nudged along considerably by conditions at Sago.

The worker injury rate at the mine was three times the national average. In the last seven months, the Sago mine suffered 14 major roof falls.