air pockets
I'm not really a news junkie these days, but last night I was glued to my TV. I wanted to see those miners. They were alive, they said. Like they weren't even injured. Like they'd just emerge, coal-faced and super-human because we all needed something too amazing to be true right about now.
If I'd been a reporter on the ground, I probably would've gotten swept up in the story with the best of them, but as a journalist watching from afar, it was obvious with 20 minutes: Something isn't right. When the miners didn't appear and didn't appear, I kept expecting the newscasters to start using phrases like "unconfirmed reports." But they didn't.
The miracle-believing little kid in me accepted it all as happy magic-sent truth, but the conspiracy-jaded skeptic thought: Something's going on in Washington and this is Wag the Dog to get the reporters out of the way.
Finally Maria convinced me to go to sleep, but she cajoled me out of bed six hours later, saying, "You can probably see your miners now on Good Morning America."
But of course there were no miners on Good Morning America. The sole survivor, bless his heart, might have been celebrated as a whole country's miracle, but now he's gonna be damn lucky to come through without a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The media didn't do it, but the front page story in USA Today would have earned me an "F" in Journalism 101 even if it had been true--because the story had no source. A story without a source is fiction.
I grew up in California where the sun shines near-eternal. Then a mad rain comes every year or two, making rivers overflow and sending mountains back into the ocean. I was five or six years old one of those winters when the storms rushed in, causing mudslides from Mendocino to Santa Cruz. I must have been at my grandparents' house, because we didn't have a TV at home and I remember that flickering screen so vividly. Three children were missing. They'd been sleeping in their beds. Their house wiped off the mountainside. The reporter stood out there in the rain, talking about how maybe these kids were trapped in an air pocket. I pictured my new friends' air pocket round, with smooth dark walls, mystically illuminated from within. I pictured my friends sleeping in their beds like nothing had happened, the way I pictured those coal-faced miners last night. Sleeping and dreaming of sunny surf. I must have fallen asleep before the children's bodies were found, because I was well into my twenties when it occurred to me: There are no livable air pockets under mudslides.
If I'd been a reporter on the ground, I probably would've gotten swept up in the story with the best of them, but as a journalist watching from afar, it was obvious with 20 minutes: Something isn't right. When the miners didn't appear and didn't appear, I kept expecting the newscasters to start using phrases like "unconfirmed reports." But they didn't.
The miracle-believing little kid in me accepted it all as happy magic-sent truth, but the conspiracy-jaded skeptic thought: Something's going on in Washington and this is Wag the Dog to get the reporters out of the way.
Finally Maria convinced me to go to sleep, but she cajoled me out of bed six hours later, saying, "You can probably see your miners now on Good Morning America."
But of course there were no miners on Good Morning America. The sole survivor, bless his heart, might have been celebrated as a whole country's miracle, but now he's gonna be damn lucky to come through without a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The media didn't do it, but the front page story in USA Today would have earned me an "F" in Journalism 101 even if it had been true--because the story had no source. A story without a source is fiction.
I grew up in California where the sun shines near-eternal. Then a mad rain comes every year or two, making rivers overflow and sending mountains back into the ocean. I was five or six years old one of those winters when the storms rushed in, causing mudslides from Mendocino to Santa Cruz. I must have been at my grandparents' house, because we didn't have a TV at home and I remember that flickering screen so vividly. Three children were missing. They'd been sleeping in their beds. Their house wiped off the mountainside. The reporter stood out there in the rain, talking about how maybe these kids were trapped in an air pocket. I pictured my new friends' air pocket round, with smooth dark walls, mystically illuminated from within. I pictured my friends sleeping in their beds like nothing had happened, the way I pictured those coal-faced miners last night. Sleeping and dreaming of sunny surf. I must have fallen asleep before the children's bodies were found, because I was well into my twenties when it occurred to me: There are no livable air pockets under mudslides.
posted by Contact at 5:18 PM
2 Comments:
As we watched the tragedy unfold and learned more about the
mine, our grief was coupled with anger. We learned the Sago Mine
had more than 270 safety violations over the past two years. In
the past year alone, the mine was cited nine times for failing
to enact a proper mine ventilation plan, a key to preventing
fires and explosions in the mine.
Despite a record of violations and injuries much higher than the
average for coal mines of similar size, the mine's owner paid
just $24,000 in fines in the past two years--with most of the
serious violations carrying a penalty of just $247 each--far
from enough to force the company to change its practices.
Why so little enforcement? As the New York Times put it in an
editorial this morning, "the Bush administration's cramming of
important posts in the Department of the Interior with biased
operatives from the coal, oil and gas industry is not reassuring
about general safety in the mines." The administration followed
a similar practice at the Mine Safety and Health Administration
(MSHA), the agency responsible for overseeing mine safety,
appointing coal industry management officials to key positions,
who promoted "cooperation" over enforcement.
What's more, the administration and the Republican-led Congress
has cut inspectors and worker safety programs from MSHA at a
time when the coal industry is growing and more resources are
needed to keep our miners safe. The 2006 budget passed by
Congress cuts $4.9 million, after adjusting for inflation, from
MSHA's 2005 budget.
And we cannot ignore the fact that workers in the Sago Mine did
not have a union to back them up when they raised safety
concerns. As John Bennett, whose father was killed in the mine
accident, said on NBC's Today show yesterday:
"We have no protection for our workers. We need to get the
United Mine Workers back in these coal mines to protect
[against] these safety violations, to protect the workers....
"Now they got to work in unsafe conditions. That's why we got 12
dead men laying in the morgue right now, along with my father."
When the workers who go down in the coal mines every day have no
one to speak for them, when former coal company officials are
responsible for enforcing worker safety laws, when companies
face only a slap on the wrist for serious, repeated violations
that put their workers in grave danger, tragedies like the Sago
Mine explosion are inevitable. We must do everything in our
power to see safety measures are strongly enforced and workers
have a real right to form a union without employer harassment or
interference.
What happened to these 12 miners is an unspeakable tragedy. The
grief of their families is unfathomable. Our thoughts and
prayers are with everyone touched by this disaster.
As mine workers' advocate Mother Jones told us, we must "pray
for the dead, and fight like hell for the living" to see that
this kind of tragedy does not happen again.
In solidarity,
Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO
P.S. If you would like to learn more about the Sago Mine
disaster, here are a few resources worth a look:
The New York Times editorial, "The Sago Mine Disaster," Jan. 5
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/z1q9F171Vqgi/
USA Today, "Mine Had Hundreds of Violations," Jan. 4
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/zdq9F171Vqgk/
Today show video interview with John Bennett, Jan. 4
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/a7q9F171Vqgn/
(Click "Governor, victim's son discuss accident" link in video
box on the right side.)
Working for Change, "EXCLUSIVE: Bush Ignored Explicit Warnings
in 2002 About Mine Safety," Jan. 4
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/z7q9F171Vqg9/
House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Democratic
staff, "Lawmakers Call for Immediate Congressional Hearings into
Mine Safety to Help Prevent Another Tragedy," Jan. 4
http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/apq9F171Vqg8/
--------------------------------------------------
Visit the Web address below to tell your friends about this.
http://www.unionvoice.org/join-forward.html?domain=wfean&r=-pq9F171EuIi
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
Working Families e-Activist Network at:
http://www.unionvoice.org/wfean/join.html?r=-pq9F171EuIiE
Whenever those Californian rains would come, I would be scared to death. I was so afriad it would flood where we lived that I would pack a backpack with essential items and sentimental trinkets. That way, when tragedy struck, I would be prepared. The only house of the 6 I grew up in that I felt safe in was up on a hill. A steep one. Even then, I still ran home from school, scared to death one day, because I had seen big fluffy clouds in the sky that looked like thunderclouds. Which could only mean one thing to an over-imaginative 8 year old: Rain Apocaplypse.
Post a Comment
<< Home