Miner, construction worker deaths

This video from the USA is called Shocking Report On Mining Company – Massey Energy.

It has been almost 10 months since an explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine disaster in Montcoal, West Virginia claimed the lives of 29 miners. MSHA is now providing its “working theory” of the disaster: here.

The security chief at Massey Energy‘s Upper Big Branch coal mine has been charged with obstructing investigations into the explosion that killed 29 miners last year: here.

Less than three weeks before 29 miners were killed in an explosion and fire ball at the Upper Big Branch mine last April a government safety expert tried to get top Massey executives to send the company’s ventilation expert to fix ongoing ventilation problems at the mine: here.

An investigation into the April 2010 explosion that took the lives of 29 miners in West Virginia uncovered a “corporate culture” that placed production over safety: here.

The recently released findings from an investigation into last year’s explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia expose the brutal and deadly conditions in the US coal industry: here.

By Naomi Spencer in the USA:

West Virginia teen is first US coal mining fatality of 2011

1 February 2011

Nineteen-year-old John C. Lester, a West Virginia coal miner with just over 90 days on the job, was killed in an equipment accident January 27. His death is the first coal mining fatality of 2011, but he is the 36th West Virginia coal miner to die in the past year.

The state’s Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training said that at the time of his death Lester was still working as an apprentice miner, or a “red hat,” in the Jims Branch No. 3B mine. The site is operated by the Baylor Mining company.

The mine is one of a multitude of underground operations in Wyoming County, an area crippled by long-term economic distress. The victim’s young age gives some indication of the limited prospects facing thousands in the coalfields region.

Wyoming County, like all its contiguous counties, has deep poverty and a hemorrhaging population due to the collapse in coal mining jobs and the shuttering of US Steel in the 1980s. Today, one in four residents live below the official poverty line; per capita income is barely $14,200. The county suffers double-digit unemployment on top of a labor force participation rate of only 40 percent.

By Joseph Santolan in the Philippines:

Ten workers die in construction accident in the Philippines

1 February 2011

An electric gondola used on the exterior of a high-rise construction in the Makati business district of the capital Manila collapsed on January 27. It fell 21 stories and landed on protruding metal rods. Ten construction workers died; one survived but is now in the hospital with numerous fractures and injuries. The tragic death of these workers was completely avoidable. The accident reveals the appalling working conditions of the construction industry in the Philippines.

The accident occurred at Eton Property Group’s luxury condominium construction, Eton Residences.

USA: Massey Mines Cited by Feds for Violations: here.

Three lawsuits filed earlier this month charge Massey Energy with operating its Upper Big Branch mine in a “willful, wonton and recklessly unsafe manner” that caused the deaths of 29 miners: here.

West Virginia Mine Disaster: One Year Later, Safety Overhaul Stalled: here.

A year after the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 coal miners, no one has been held responsible: here.

South Africa’s highest court has ordered a prominent Johannesburg-based mining company to compensate the family of a dead miner, overturning a law that prohibited miners with lung diseases from claiming compensation: here.

ITUC and Global Union Federations Call on Chilean President to Deliver on Mine Safety Promises: here.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s worst mining disaster in almost a century opened in the South Island mining town of Greymouth on April 5, with the presiding judge saying he would not lay blame over the methane gas explosions that killed 29 men last November: here.