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Hazards of Mining…
It appears that Canada has a better grip on saving trapped miners than the U.S. has. Within 30 hours they managed to save ALL of their miners, no injuries reported.
I don’t know if our mines have the same feature, but according to the Bloomberg report:
The 72 miners were forced to seek shelter in so-called safe rooms within the mine after a fire broke out at about 3 a.m. local time yesterday and smoke began to fill the tunnels, the Canadian Press said. The chambers can be sealed off from the rest of the mine and are supplied with oxygen, food and water.
This type of “safe room” was exactly what I was wondering about when the Virginia miners were trapped last month. Why wasn’t there some kind of safe area where they could go—aside from the plastic sheet they attempting to use. Ugh.
The only thing that bothered me in the story was when the mine’s spokeman said, “We know they’re tired. Getting them back to work is our immediate priority.”
Erm. Don’t you think being trapped in a mine deserves at least a week off or something. Right away they’re talking about getting them back to work.
Also, to be fair, it appears that the mine was owned by a U.S. company, but the miners were contracted workers from Canada. The point of the story though is that the safety in this mine should be the standard for all other mines to work by. It’s not the 1800s anymore. If we can stick people on the moon, you’d think we’d be able to keep people alive in a freaking mine.
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