Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110431
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DENNIS SUTHERLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
LAX SAFETY PRACTICES WEREN'T THE CULPRIT
THIS IS in response to Greg Edwards' Feb. 10 article about Harry Childress, "Inspector's record questioned":I take serious issue with the portions of this article that refer to small mines as "dirty little secrets" and "death traps," and to the attack on Childress' father's safety record. Edwards has not practiced responsible journalism. Underground coal mines are dangerous places, and any lack of commitment by company management to prevent accidents and conditions that lead to injury or death is not defensible.
This article states sources that say the mine at which Childress' father worked "had the state's worst accident record in 1991 and was not a safe mine." It also states Childress could have been responsible for "lax enforcement at his father's mine," based upon the safety record for 1991. I work for the company that operates this mine, and it did in fact report six accidents that year. Admittedly, on the surface, less than an admirable safety record. What was not pointed out was that Childress' father retired in June 1991 after 20 years of safe, efficient and productive work at our company. For those first six months of 1991, there had only been one accident at his mine. It was for a strained or sprained knee - not what anyone could construe as an accident that leads to the inference that his father supervised "the mine with the worst safety record in Virginia."
Edwards failed to do a minimum of two simple things before he reported serious allegations about people's character and lives:
He did not call to see if Childress was employed during the time in question.
He did not substantiate these claims by looking at readily available "internal state documents" that are public record and from which these serious criticisms were supposedly drawn.
If he had done either, I do not think he would have written this article quite the same. Within those documents lies what Edwards failed to find, and his sources never bothered to tell. Many injuries that occur in underground mines are the result of people performing the same kind of work many other laborers and construction people do, but miners do it in confined areas, sometimes as low as 32 inches. There are supplies to be lifted, carried, loaded and unloaded and big, heavy parts to be installed on and taken off machinery. This bending, lifting and crawling in these confined areas results in more injuries than would occur if these tasks could be performed standing up straight or whatever position best suited the task. But these types of injuries are not even of the types to which your writer was referring, whether he knew it or not.
Underground coal mines are inherently dangerous places with high-tech problems to solve, such as preventing the mine roof from falling or the accumulation of dangerous levels of explosive gases. These were the dangers to which Edwards was referring - those dangers that are allowed to occur or worsen without the proper commitment from management and workers. These are the dangers with which his sources try to slander the small operators by quoting statistics in a vacuum, with no explanation that many accidents not related to the inherent dangers of underground mining occur even with their own safety teams policing their own workers.
In this case, all the injuries at the mine in question in 1991 were a result of men crawling, lifting or bending in confined spaces (less than 48 inches in this instance) and twisting, straining or spraining backs or knees. Not a single injury at this mine that year resulted from any disregard of safety practices, laws or regulations by Childress' father or anyone else. One of the back strains was even a reoccurrence of a previous injury.
I think Edwards owes both Chidresses a personal and a public apology, and he owes a lot of other people in this industry a commitment to do a better job the next time.
Editor's note: Prior to the publication of the story to which the letter-writer refers, both Chief Mine Inspector Childress and his employer, the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, were asked to respond to allegations in a United Mine Workers Journal story about Childress. Both Childress and the department declined to comment and that was mentioned in our story about the UMW story, as was the fact that Childress' father had only worked at the mine in question until mid-1991.
Dennis Sutherland of Abingdon works at Lambert Coal Co. as office manager.