Federal regulators failed to protect workers at Utah's Crandall Canyon mine, where nine people died last summer, a U.S. Labor Department watchdog said Monday.
The department's inspector general's office blamed federal mining regulators for negligence in approving a roof-control plan for the mine. Six miners died in a collapse Aug. 6, and another cave-in 10 days later killed three people trying to reach the trapped men.
The 80-page report Monday from Assistant Inspector General Elliot Lewis said the Mine Safety and Health Administration could not show it made the right decision when it approved risky retreat mining at Crandall Canyon...
...The report placed much of the blame on MSHA's field office in Price, Utah, and said agency headquarters exercised little or no oversight...
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which leases federal land for mining, doesn't have to ensure safety but consistently raised questions about risks at Crandall Canyon, according to the report.
"Thing(s) should get interesting soon," a BLM inspector wrote of cave-in dangers on July 12, less than a month before the disaster.
Who is in charge over at MSHA?
As usual, read the entire thing.The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.
President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation's mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.
It is unconscionable to place a man who has a long history of indifference to the safety of miners in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Yet George W. Bush chose to do just that and six miners are needlessly dead.
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