New year begins with more coal miners’ deaths in US

In the first month of 2007, three coal miners were killed. On January 6, Jeremy Garcia, a 26-year-old miner and father of two small children, was killed at the Elk Creek Mine in Somerset, Colorado, while trying to move a large bundle of metal roofing screen. The young miner, who began work at the mine three months earlier, was crushed between the wire mesh and the scoop of the loader he was using.

On January 13, two miners—James Thomas, 48, and Pete Poindexter, 33—were killed when a section of roof they were working under collapsed on them at the Cucumber mine in West Virginia. Both men had been working at the mine less than a year.

Very little has changed for the safety of miners in US coalfields since the explosion ripped through the Sago mine on January 2, 2006, killing 12 West Virginia miners.

In all, 47 coal miners were killed in 2006, more than twice the number as in 2005 and the largest death toll in the US since 1995. In West Virginia alone, 23 miners were killed last year, the highest number since 1981. In neighboring Kentucky, 16 miners died in accidents. Two miners were killed in Alabama and one each in Arizona, Maryland, Montana, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia.

More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/mine-f05.shtml