* * Mourning the death of 29 West Virginia Coal Miners

29 miners in West Virginia are dead and I’m mad as hell.
When I was working on my book, The Spine of the Virginias, I had the pleasure to meet many current and former coal miners.  To a man (and I could find no women miners), they enjoyed the work and appreciated the profound sense of brotherhood they found working underground.  When you’re hundreds of feet under the mountains of West Virginia, your life depends upon the skill, commitment, and care of others.
Therein lies the rub.  Safety in a coal mine depends upon mutual commitment, which extends beyond the other miners.  Everyone connected with the mine must share that commitment: the miners, the regulators, the inspectors, and the owners.  When everyone is committed to safety and regulations are followed strictly, mines are generally safe places to work.  In this case, although the failures to protect this mine from a terrible explosion seem to be systemic, who could be a better villian than the owner, Massey Coal, and its president Don Blankenship?
Blankenship hates unions, thinks global warming is a farce, rants about atheists and environmentalists, and Tweeted recently that “America doesn’t need Green jobs, but Red, White & Blue ones.”  A friend of mine from the coalfields calls Blankenship “odious.”
The miners I met told me of the potential for fire from the mix of methane and air.  The disturbance of coal inevitably releases methane, although some mines are “gassier” than others.  Too high a concentration of methane isn’t explosive nor is too low a concentration.  However, that “just right” concentration is likely to exist somewhere within every mine unless strict ventilation requirements are followed.
The Upper Big Branch mine, where last week’s explosion occurred, was sited with over 500 safety violations last year alone, twice the prior year.  Yet tragically, none of these brought about the adherence to regulations that would have prevented the explosion and kept these men alive.  
To Massey, penalties are a mere cost of doing business, it would seem.  Massey has earned a reputation of putting production before safety.  Massey's above-the-law approach and disdain for safety and preservation of the environment has been well-chronicled:
*    Massey Energy was responsible for a coal slurry spill in October 2000 in Kentucky, estimated to be 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill and at the time the largest environmental disaster east of the Mississippi.  Massey was warned of and ignored signs of the impoundment’s weaknesses and failed to act.  
*    When a low court jury ruled against them in a fraud case granting $50 million to an opponent, Blankenship took the case to the West Virginia State Supreme Court.  In an expose by ABC news where Blankenship broke a reporter’s camera, Blankenship was found to be palling around with and donating $3.5 million into the campaign of a candidate (West Virginia’s Supreme Court is elected.) who ultimately won election and then didn’t recuse himself in the case, which was overturned in Massey’s favor.  Novelist John Grisham used this case has the basis of his 2008 book, The Appeal.
*    The latest fire in a mine wasn’t Massey’s first.  In January 2006, a fire at the Aracoma mine killed two workers.  A month after this fatal disaster, Blankenship described the explosion as “rare and statistically insignificant.”  Blankenship has often received police escorts to and from meetings with townspeople and relatives of the “statistically insignificant” fatalities in his mines, as they have been known to hurl invectives and even chairs at him.
For most of us, the very thought of being hundreds or even thousands of feet underground is abhorrent.  Visual images of instant or protracted death in the bowels of hell make us question the sanity of anyone who digs the coal “icing” out from within thick layers of rock “cake”.  But the people who do this work provide for the material well-being we enjoy.  They literally keep the lights on for us.  The electrical power that allows the computer upon which I’m now composing this essay and the one upon which you'll read it likely comes from the burning of Appalachian coal.  It is disingenuous to rail against the danger and unsightly aspects of coal mining and burning unless we’re prepared to do without the cheap and reliable electrical power it provides.  However, safety can be achieved if everyone involved is committed.
The deep hollows of Appalachia where coal mining is done have produced a unique brand of human beings.  Many I met fit my stereotype of being deeply religious, pugnacious, rough around the edges, and tough as nails.  They were also kind and eager to share their lifestyle with visitors.  Ironically, they may be the first to rail against “burdensome government regulations” when stringent regulations and strict enforcement may prevent some of the disasters from which they too often suffer.
Our governor, Bob McDonnell, has asked Virginia residents to observe a moment of silence at 3:30 p.m. today to express our solidarity with our brothers and sisters to the northwest. I hope you’ll join he and me in doing so.  When you’re done, I hope you’ll join me in another moment of outrage that things like this continue to happen.
Coal is actively mined not two hours by car from my doorstep.  I encourage readers to visit Pocahontas, Bramwell, Jewel Ridge, Coalwood, War, Welch, Ieager, or Gary rather than Monticello or Appomattox, next time you seek an historic or cultural experience.  After seeing coal country first-hand and meeting the people who live and work there, I never turn on a light or a computer or take a hot shower without thinking about the men who toil underground extracting from the earth the rock that burns.