Knee Jerks

You might know that the first words out of the mouths of certain prominent politicians and Massey Energy officials would be a warning against a knee-jerk reaction to the Upper Big Branch Coal disaster.

But what is meant by a “knee-jerk” reaction, anyway?

One example might be a political attack ad that portrays opponents as just biding their time till they can join up with President Obama to wage war on coal. In reality, pretty much all politicians in Kentucky view Big Coal as a wellspring of cash.

Or it could be decrying any opponent of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) as an outsider who wants only to destroy “our” way of life. Again, the reality is that almost all those opposed to MTR are local citizens. In other words, they live here and work here, too.

Well, there is all that evidence that purports to show that production trumped safety with Massey officials. Wouldn’t you know that all those violations allegedly committed by those in charge of Upper Big Branch would speak louder than Don Blankenship’s protests that, on average, this mine got fewer citations than the industry as a whole.

Mr. Blankenship is the highest paid CEO in the coal industry, and in this situation, he will have to earn that commission. So far, that effort consists of warning against knee-jerk reactions, and of reminding everyone that we still don’t know what caused this catastrophe.

He didn’t need to add the word “officially”, did he? Because, as one mining official put it last week (paraphrased), you don’t need to be an expert to know how this happened.

To get to the gist of that, we have to go back to the most serious of the violations that were allegedly committed at Upper Big Branch. They invariably involved failure to ventilate the mine properly, and leaving coal dust uncontrolled. Ventilation should keep methane to less than 1% concentration. Between 5-15% it will explode, as will coal dust that is allowed to accumulate.

If you take everything Mr. Blankenship has said about production over the course of his career at Massey, you might be tempted to jump to conclusions. You might ask yourself why he was seemingly so willing to roll the dice when he must have known how deadly the consequences could be if something went wrong and resulted in a worst-case scenario.

Perhaps, like those who drink and drive, he thought that nothing like this could ever happen. Take Larry Mahoney, the man behind the Carrolton bus crash. God only knows how many times he drove drunk without hurting anything but his own reputation. His last DUI, though, was a worst-case scenario eerily similar to the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in one respect: It cost 28 innocent people their lives.

Sometimes those who are responsible for the tragic consequences of their own inaction are required to do more than engage in spin. Arthur Davis allegedly drove a semi he knew to have bad brakes. In arguing for an indictment on two counts of manslaughter, prosecutors maintained he should have known his actions would prove deadly.

Could Massey officials see similar indictments in the wake of this tragic event? That shouldn’t be ruled out if the investigation finds that they were at fault.