Lowaicue
英語在香港
We sit glued to the screen as rescue efforts to release the 33 Chilean miners continue. We watch, finger-nail chewing and smiling with the trapped men because once, many years ago, I too was trapped underground by a rock fall.
I was only trapped for a few hours but the feelings we two had at the time were as intense as any. In those far off days there was no record of who was where in a mine and the various shift bosses and managers would log the work places as they made their daily rounds. So there we were. Stuck behind a huge blade-like boulder literally teetering on a tiny protrusion and that could fall at any minute and slice us in two like a knife through ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’.
So we sit and will the drills to hurry to the Chileans and every day we check the progress. Now that drill is only 80 metres away!
At the same time we hear that Chinese premier Wen, that little smiley man who is so often in the news, today with Berlusconi in Italy. Has issued a directive that mine managers in China must go down the mines with their men.
Since 2000, China has lost at least a thousand coal miners every year. In between 2002 and 2004, the number of deaths per year climbed above 6000, 200 times the number in the US for the same time period. In 2009, China lost 2630 coal miners, 77 times more than the US. Every year four times the number of coal miners die in China as die in the entire rest of the word combined.
Superb idea, Mr. Wen! Many of these men are totally corrupt and will try to squirm their way out of responsibility.
Not all I must say. I met a guy, name of Wang, many years ago and he had started in the mines lying on his side with pick and shovel hacking coal from a ‘room’ barely 18 inches in height and progressing to mine manager and thence to area supervisor. I went to Mr Wang’s house. It was very small. Neither his wife nor his children had ever seen a westerner before.
So I got to wondering. How about the same policy in the States? Not the UK because Our Sacred Lady of Grantham, St. Margaret closed all our mines in the 1980s.
Here is a list of US mining disasters since the end of WWII.
1947 Centralia coal mine, 111 men died
1951 Orient mine in Illinois claimed 119 lives.
1968 Farmington mine, West Virginia, claimed 78 lives
1972 Sunshine mine in Idaho killed 91 miners,
1981 Dutch Creek mine in Colorado killed 15 miners.
1984 27 lives at the Wilberg mine in Utah.
1986 Fairview, West Virginia, killed five miners.
1989 Wheatcroft mine in Kentucky claimed ten lives.
1992 Eight miners killed at the South Mountain mine in Virginia
2001 13 men inside the Brookwood mine in Alabama.
2006 Sago mine in West Virginia killed 12 men.
2007 Six miners and three rescue workers were killed at the Crandell Canyon mine in Utah.
Figures for the UK are as bad, if not worse than the US. Unfortunately they are recorded in a form that would take too long to extract and abstract.
Yes, send ‘em down! Let’s say one full shift every month in a non supervisory position. Let them get those shiny, hardly used hard hats scratched and dirty. Perhaps then they will correctly implement the safety measures put in place by the various governing bodies.
I was only trapped for a few hours but the feelings we two had at the time were as intense as any. In those far off days there was no record of who was where in a mine and the various shift bosses and managers would log the work places as they made their daily rounds. So there we were. Stuck behind a huge blade-like boulder literally teetering on a tiny protrusion and that could fall at any minute and slice us in two like a knife through ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’.
So we sit and will the drills to hurry to the Chileans and every day we check the progress. Now that drill is only 80 metres away!
At the same time we hear that Chinese premier Wen, that little smiley man who is so often in the news, today with Berlusconi in Italy. Has issued a directive that mine managers in China must go down the mines with their men.
Since 2000, China has lost at least a thousand coal miners every year. In between 2002 and 2004, the number of deaths per year climbed above 6000, 200 times the number in the US for the same time period. In 2009, China lost 2630 coal miners, 77 times more than the US. Every year four times the number of coal miners die in China as die in the entire rest of the word combined.
Superb idea, Mr. Wen! Many of these men are totally corrupt and will try to squirm their way out of responsibility.
Not all I must say. I met a guy, name of Wang, many years ago and he had started in the mines lying on his side with pick and shovel hacking coal from a ‘room’ barely 18 inches in height and progressing to mine manager and thence to area supervisor. I went to Mr Wang’s house. It was very small. Neither his wife nor his children had ever seen a westerner before.
So I got to wondering. How about the same policy in the States? Not the UK because Our Sacred Lady of Grantham, St. Margaret closed all our mines in the 1980s.
Here is a list of US mining disasters since the end of WWII.
1947 Centralia coal mine, 111 men died
1951 Orient mine in Illinois claimed 119 lives.
1968 Farmington mine, West Virginia, claimed 78 lives
1972 Sunshine mine in Idaho killed 91 miners,
1981 Dutch Creek mine in Colorado killed 15 miners.
1984 27 lives at the Wilberg mine in Utah.
1986 Fairview, West Virginia, killed five miners.
1989 Wheatcroft mine in Kentucky claimed ten lives.
1992 Eight miners killed at the South Mountain mine in Virginia
2001 13 men inside the Brookwood mine in Alabama.
2006 Sago mine in West Virginia killed 12 men.
2007 Six miners and three rescue workers were killed at the Crandell Canyon mine in Utah.
Figures for the UK are as bad, if not worse than the US. Unfortunately they are recorded in a form that would take too long to extract and abstract.
Yes, send ‘em down! Let’s say one full shift every month in a non supervisory position. Let them get those shiny, hardly used hard hats scratched and dirty. Perhaps then they will correctly implement the safety measures put in place by the various governing bodies.