Cruel
Posted on January 4th, 2006 by Deb
You’ve heard about those West Virginia coal miners, haven’t you?
Thirteen men, trapped in a mine. They found one body last night, but then around midnight, the waiting families were told they’d found the other twelve–alive. They celebrated and rejoiced for three hours, and then were told, no, sorry, only one of them is alive. The mine officials knew within 20 minutes of that first, false report, that not all the miners were alive, and they let the families continue celebrating for three hours. Three hours. And then they went in and broke their hearts.
It might not have been deliberate, but it was cruel. What a nasty trick of Fate to pull on people already stretched too far by grief and mortal fear. My heart bleeds for them.
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Tannenbaum.
House Calls
As much as I feel for the miner’s families, I am not particularly angry with the mine officials. I’ve been in a position more than once where information control was vital and maintianing that discipline is HARD. It’s easy when the news is bad – you want to let the boss carry the water. But when you think the news is good and you know how slowly the information is going to flow? It’s hard to resist the urge to be the one to carry the good news, and even if nobody will ever know who that person was, that one phone call gave control to the rumor mill. Suddenly rumor is fact and nobody knows how to regain control. And since the first report from the scene is always wrong, or at least inaccurate, it should have been treated carefully. But that’s hard to do when you’re hoping for a miracle and you want to believe in the good news you think you’re hearing.
The mining company should have spoken out earlier to temper the excitement, but they would have been castigated equally had they said what they did find out later – that they found miners but didn’t know the condition and would report when they knew more. They were in a really awful position and they made the best decisions they could under terrible pressure. The decisions were bad, but that’s an easy thing for me to recognize when I’m not the one doing the deciding. (I’m thinking of the manin the arena quote from Teddy Roosevelt here.)
I was awake this morning thanks to a serious case of insomnia, and saw when the news changed and the follow-on news conferences. Then I dreamed about fires and explosions when I did finally get to sleep. That guy was living my worst nightmare and I only hope I will be as poised and humble when I’m in that kind of situation.
I think this is going to be a subject that will be debated for quite some time. However, I’m going to chime in with my two cents (because I’m not one for being quiet ;o) ) I agree with you, Deb, that they should have somehow let the families know that the news wasn’t as good as originally believed as soon as they possibly could (since they couldn’t keep the original incorrect report under wraps to begin with – as they should have)
Oh it’s easy to make these criticisms from the sidelines, no question. And I don’t blame anyone for the “they’re safe” message getting out there incorrectly . . . but I do blame them for not saying SOMETHING to the families after that first half hour, when they knew that not all 12 were alive, but that the families were celebrating a miracle. To let that go on for two and a half hours, knowing you were going to have to go in and break the news in the middle of all that joy, is just unfair. All they had to say was, “that’s not true, but we don’t know how many are dead yet,” so at least they would have had a chance to prepare for the worst . . . again. Nobody should have to go through that kind of emotional roller-coaster–especially when that last, unexpected dip could have been tempered by a word of caution. I appreciate that the head of the company didn’t want to go in there and make any definitive statement until they knew how many were, in fact, dead . . . but they should have sent somebody in with a “don’t celebrate yet” message. I can’t imagine going from that height of joy to that depth of grief THAT quickly. But yes, ultimately, the whole thing is just a tragic accident. Those poor families. I feel sorry for the mine spokesman, too. (“Welcome to the worst day of my life.”)
Sigh.
Yeah, this whole story was so sad. I agree, I do think that it should have been controlled better. The worst is, this particular company’s mines have had a very alarming amount of violations this past year. I hope that they do a complete investigation. Regulations on mining has slipped tremendously the past couple of years…including the current Administration’s loosening regulations to help mining companies at the expense miners health and safety.