Miners Tragedy

style=width:208px;height:300px;float:right;" >JOSE’ Henriquez is called ‘The Pastor’. The media gave him this title, but he prefers to be called simply ‘Don José’. He is a 54-year-old man who has worked in Chile’s copper and gold mines for 33 years. Thirty-three is also the number of miners – including Don José – who were trapped 2,000 feet underground in the San José mine in Chile between 5 August and 13 October 2010, and rescued in front of a worldwide audience of one billion people.



The 33 miners needed more than food and physical strength to survive, and Don José helped them hang on to hope by leading prayers twice a day. He talks about sensing something terrible was going to happen in the weeks before disaster struck. “My grandmother came over on two occasions to warn my mother that something terrible was going to happen to me, and that it would be very hard for me to escape,” he reflects. “When I said goodbye to my daughter, I was sure that something was going to happen, because she really struggled to say goodbye”. Was this a premonition or did the safety record at the mine lead him to feel that his life could be in danger with every descent into it?





Disaster waiting to happen





Within a fortnight of the dramatic rescue, a Chilean politician claimed that miners had been refused permission to quit their shaft that day, even though they voiced safety fears. They had heard unusual noises in the mine. However, this version of events was immediately contradicted by a lawyer acting for the San Esteban mining company. In fact, the accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile’s privatized mines. The San José mine became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. Then, on 30 July 2010, a labour department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies,” but no action was taken. Six days later, the men were entombed. The company involved has had a chain of accidents in the three mines it operates in the area, starting in 2001. They include three fatalities, two in the San José mine itself, which is subject to rock-bursts and roof falls. Two miners have lost legs, one on 3 July 2010. The Safety Consultant employed by the mine resigned six months before the disaster, in frustration at the violations of safety standards, for example the lack of roof mesh to catch rock falls. The Chilean state geological service SERNAGEOMIN, which has some responsibility as a safety inspectorate, has only two inspectors for the 2,000 mines in the desert Atacama region, where San José is located.





Erosion of safety measures





Chilean president Sebastián Piñera appeared on TV screens around the world welcoming every trapped miner back to the surface and encapsulating national rejoicing. In doing so, his government managed to avoid blame for the scandalous lack of regulation of this dangerous mine. Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail industries. His brother and former business partner, José Piñera, a labour minister under General Augusto Pinochet’s administration, privatized mining and state pensions, and all but destroyed the trade unions’ and miners’ ability to be listened to over safety issues. The wealthy owners of the San José mine had not welcomed trade union membership and action, and they had not made pension or health insurance payments for the workers for several months before the disaster. Bishop Gaspar Quintana Jorquera of Copiapo, the diocese where the mine is located, has identified the need “to build a society where the right to work in conditions of safety is respected, and where each one assumes the responsibility that corresponds to him so that events like this will not happen again”.





They don’t care





While Chile celebrated its rescue of all 33 miners last October, rescue efforts at a similar mine accident in China’s central Henan province didn’t go so well. On 17 October 2010, r escuers stepped up frantic efforts to save 11 miners still believed to be trapped by a gas explosion in a coal mine which killed 26 others, confirming China’s position as the most dangerous place in the world to mine. But hopes faded even as relatives and friends kept a vigil above, mirroring the vigil of relatives in Chile. The survival chances were slim anyway as it was thought the Chinese miners were buried in coal dust.



The tragedy in China was just one of dozens of fatal mining accidents in that country each year. In 2009, 2,631 Chinese miners were killed in mining accidents, according to official figures, but it is thought that mine disasters are so common in China they are reported only when the death toll is higher than a dozen. In February 2009, in Shanxi province, 36 miners died and 115 were rescued after a week trapped underground. The miners survived by eating sawdust, tree bark, paper and even coal. Some strapped themselves to the walls of the shafts with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept. The government then launched a crackdown on illegal mines, closing 1,250 of them, in a bid to improve the industry’s safety record. A new rule obliges Chinese coal mine managers and engineers to go down the mines they supervise at least five times a month to give them a personal interest in ensuring safety levels. However, the October 2010 tragedy in central Henan illustrated China’s continuing shortcomings. The deadly blast occurred as workers drilled a hole to release pressure from a gas build-up. A similar explosion at the same mine killed 23 people two years ago, and yet lessons were not learned. The mother of a missing 20-year-old miner who had worked in the mine for about a year commented that, “they don’t care about the workers’ safety, they only care about their production”.





Scant attention





China produces 45 percent of the world’s coal, and has much higher numbers of fatalities per tonne of coal than other big producing nations, such as India or the US. It accounts for 70 percent of global coal mining deaths. But state media gives it scant attention. China Central Television’s news channel, which had a live broadcast from the Henan mine the day after the blast, made no mention of the accident later on the main television evening news. This contrasts with the extensive coverage in China’s state-controlled media of Chile’s rescue of 33 miners from the San José mine. Critics link China’s persistent mine safety problems to a lack of transparency and civil rights. Li Chengpeng, a novelist and blogger, writes, “In this country, there are many talented writers, musicians, painters, scholars and even cooks who are all the miners of their profession: they will not come out of the shaft and see the light of day all their life.”





The Pike River tragedy





Then, there was the coal mining disaster in New Zealand the very next month. It was on 19 November 2010 that 29 men were trapped 2.5 kilometres inside the Pike River colliery on New Zealand’s South Island by a gas explosion. Rescuers were waiting for gas levels to drop so that they could mount a search operation, when a second and more powerful explosion a week later ended any hope of finding survivors. This was a supposedly state-of-the-art coal mine, opened just two years ago, but the ventilation of dangerous gases had been overlooked. This is all the more surprising because Pike River is near to the Brunner mine, where 65 died in 1896, and had the same gas issues, which the company was well aware of and had highlighted to investors in the week before the explosion. Many thought it insensitive when, within two weeks of the disaster, the Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said he believed the mine would eventually reopen because there were still 50 million tons of coal there.



The 29 miners were aged between 17 and 62, with the youngest going down the mine for the first time on the day of the disaster. The tragedy left 13 children fatherless. On 26 November about 500 friends and family were taken to “say goodbye” at the remote colliery. Many carried flowers and photos of their loved ones during the visit. Laurie Drew, whose 21-year-old son Zen was killed, said she found the visit “very healing” and it helped her to say goodbye. “I felt close to my boy,” said another mother, Leeza Verhoeven, “and it just felt like we were able to relax with the spirits of the loved ones”. The families were able to see the wall where the miners’ name tags remained, according to industry tradition, to show they had started their shift and were still underground. Meanwhile, in New Zealand’s parliament politicians, dressed in black, sang the hymn ‘How Great Thou Art’.





Cold comfort





When the 33 Chilean miners were first contacted, 17 days after their incarceration, their first question was about a colleague who had left with a truck-load of mineral just before the roof-fall. He got out in time, and the trapped men gave a great cheer when they heard this. The solidarity between the miners was also shown in the way they organised themselves to survive, eating a tiny ration of food every 48 hours, so that it kept them alive in humid and hot conditions until they were located. The worldwide television audience celebrated their uplifting story of human struggle and the dedication of their rescuers.



But the disaster also reminds of the dangers of mining. Nobody really knows how many people are injured in mining, but it is likely to be hundreds of thousands individuals every year, and it is thought that up to 15,000 miners are killed every year around the world, especially in the process of coal mining and hard rock mining. According to the International Labour Organisation, while mining employs around 1 percent of the global labour force, it generates 8 percent of fatal accidents. Most of the deaths occur in the global south, especially China, and in rural parts of developed countries.



Thousands of communities worldwide live in fear of mining disasters, and Church advocacy groups lobby regularly at the Annual General Meetings of the world’s largest mining companies for better environmental care. Our society needs to become more aware of the social and environmental costs of the extractive industries, and ways in which our lifestyles are linked with them. After all it is the high demand for minerals and their high prices that has increased pressure on mines and miners to maintain production. Big headlines are cold comfort for the families and friends, workmates and communities of people who will never come home from work again.





UPPER BIG BRANCH DISASTER



The United States saw its worst mine disaster in four decades during April 2010 when 29 Appalachian miners were killed more than 1,000 feet underground after a massive explosion in a West Virginia coal mine. The Upper Big Branch mine, about 30 miles south of Charleston, was the third mining disaster involving a loss of life in West Virginia over a four year period.  The mine had a history of methane buildups, and since April 2009, federal regulators had cited Massey Energy, one of the top five US coal producers, many times for safety violations at Upper Big Branch involving methane control plans and its failure to develop an adequate ventilation plan. After speaking to bereaved families, one of which had lost three relatives in the explosion, President Barack Obama commented that “it’s clear that more needs to be done” about mine safety. In December, the Massey Energy Chief Executive, Don Blankenship, finally bowed to pressure – particularly from union members - and announced his resignation. However, he continues to face lawsuits, filed by widows of victims, for negligence.