It doesn’t take much time browsing Mine Safety & Health Administration records to discover that the site of yesterday’s horrific explosion — Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine 30 miles south of Charleston, W.Va. — was an operation with some issues. There are thousands of safety violations cited over the years — 458 last year alone — including a repeated failure to remove combustible material from active work areas.
But don’t ask Don Blankenship to be overly concerned. The Massey CEO — and author of an infamous 2005 memo instructing his deep mine superintendents to ignore any requests unrelated to coal production — was interviewed by a local West Virginia news outlet today. The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. has this quote from Blankenship:
Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process. You have inspections every day and it’s hard to differentiate sometimes between, you know, head counts or number counts of violations and the seriousness or type of it.
[Upper Big Branch] was a mine that had violations. I think the fact that MSHA and the state and our firebosses and the best engineers that you can find were all in and around this mine and all believed it to be safe … speaks for itself.
“Any suspicion that the mine was improperly operated or illegally operated or anything like that,” Blankenship added, “would be unfounded.”