thedrifter
02-06-06, 07:40 AM
Does it take disasters to wake us up?
By Fr. Jerome LeDoux, Contributing Writer
February 6, 2006
A frenzied, careening caravan of fire trucks pulled up to the imposing hurricane fence around the Sago mine at Tallmansville, W. Virginia. Coming to a screeching halt at the big gates, the trucks idled while the drivers puzzled over the locked gates. Despite their loud protests, it would be 11 hours before they would be admitted into the mine.
Rules, rules, rules! And now the whole world knows that any chance the 12 miners who perished in the flash fire and deadly gases might have had was squandered by the 11-hour-delay caused by the mine officials' enforcement of a silly rule. Obviously, that rule was not a safety rule, but an officious rule there for the sake of empty protocol.
With each miner having an emergency packet containing only one hour of good air, every minute is crucial when something has sparked a methane explosion which can kill outright if someone is near, and which heats and poisons the air to life-threatening levels.
Since October 2005, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has issued 50 citations to the Sago mine, some as recently as December 21, including citations for accumulation of combustible materials such as coal dust and loose coal.
Somehow, this has the sickening, familiar ring of levee oversight in the New Orleans area, which turned out to be not the overseeing of the levee system but literally a tragedy of, "Oh, I'm afraid that was a negligent oversight by rank amateurs half asleep!" It is unfortunate that oversight has the double entendre of overseeing and not seeing at all.
With 50 citations in some 60 days preceding the Sago mine disaster, who was minding the mine officials who were supposed to be overseeing life-and-death items such as the presence of coal dust, loose coal, and working vents which continually siphon out the old air, not to mention the deadly methane gas steadily accumulating in all mines?
The coal mine parallel with the levee systems around New Orleans and in central and northern California is disconcerting and frightening. Propped up mostly by complacency and apathy, coal mine oversight or levee system oversight amounts to a literal oversight of overlooking which does not close the barn door until the horse is out of the corral.
Only God knows how many people were lost in the Katrina floodwaters when FEMA refused to accept rubber rafts and rescue aids offered them by the Department of the Interior. That terrible information is just now beginning to surface after five months. For the first day following the storm, some of the best rescue equipment was not on hand.
Thank God, there is some rational movement as we go into the sixth month after the wind blasts and floodwaters of the evil twins Katrina and Rita. Evacuation plans are falling into place for the use of school buses, tour buses, rapid transit buses, Amtrak and all available means of conveyance to get people out, even if only to nearby Hammond.
Preferred vehicles for the transportation of evacuees, rationalizations for the need of a predetermined destination to situate evacuees, and excuses upon excuses for not invoking martial law to physically remove everyone to safety are becoming moot issues. Just get the citizens of New Orleans out of the bowl! Go figure later for the next steps.
Speaking of alert oversight, a FEMA employee was grilling someone whose car had been under 8-10 feet of water for two weeks. After writing all the pertinent information, the agent advised the flood victim: "We need a mechanic's report on your car." That incident will surely do if you need something to shake your head about today.
Even as we write, there are congressional hearings taking place in Washington, D.C. on the role of Mayor C. Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Police Department and other officials in the management of the city during and after Katrina. The one question throughout the hearings is: "What went wrong?"
There is something categorically - category 5 - wrong with this picture when the biggest question afloat five months after the landfall of Katrina is, "What went wrong?"
While this belabored, overworked question aims to satisfy the finger-pointing penchant of a special U.S. senate committee, the same senate holds back on full aid to storm victims.
Southwest Air Lines is one of the great success stories of this country where we see how a large corporation is doing practically everything right. For the first time in its 37-year-old history, Southwest suffered its first-ever fatality when a 737 skidded off the snowy end of a runway at Midway Airport in Chicago on December 8, 2005.
Even then, the problem stemmed from our faulty airport system wherein hundreds of airports around the nation lack a buffer zone or other safety measures to guard against overruns such as that of the 737 at Midway. In other words, the runways are too short. And the solution? Longer runways, evidently, buffer zones and other safety measures.
With its 6,500-foot runways, Midway lacks 1,000-foot buffer zones at the end of its runways, just as nearly 300 other U.S. commercial airports around the country. Midway is all of one mile square, having been built in 1923 during the propeller era.
So, we need longer runways and/or beds of crushable concrete at the runway ends. Called beds, or Engineered Material Arresting Systems (EMAS), they have stopped three dangerous overruns three times since May 1999 at Kennedy Airport in New York. So, why is this effective system in place at only 18 runways of 14 airports? Apathy? Money?
And how do we swallow this pill? A secret Pentagon report found that at least 80 percent of marines killed from upper-body wounds could have survived if they had extra body armor which was available since 2003, but until now the Pentagon refused to give.
"Am I My Brother's Keeper?," we ask one more time. Wherever we are and whatever our profession, line of work or activity, do we pull our weight in providing useful oversight of the activities of our sisters and brothers? Will it take another disaster to awaken and alert us to the minefields and obstacle courses inherent in our daily lives?
By Fr. Jerome LeDoux, Contributing Writer
February 6, 2006
A frenzied, careening caravan of fire trucks pulled up to the imposing hurricane fence around the Sago mine at Tallmansville, W. Virginia. Coming to a screeching halt at the big gates, the trucks idled while the drivers puzzled over the locked gates. Despite their loud protests, it would be 11 hours before they would be admitted into the mine.
Rules, rules, rules! And now the whole world knows that any chance the 12 miners who perished in the flash fire and deadly gases might have had was squandered by the 11-hour-delay caused by the mine officials' enforcement of a silly rule. Obviously, that rule was not a safety rule, but an officious rule there for the sake of empty protocol.
With each miner having an emergency packet containing only one hour of good air, every minute is crucial when something has sparked a methane explosion which can kill outright if someone is near, and which heats and poisons the air to life-threatening levels.
Since October 2005, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has issued 50 citations to the Sago mine, some as recently as December 21, including citations for accumulation of combustible materials such as coal dust and loose coal.
Somehow, this has the sickening, familiar ring of levee oversight in the New Orleans area, which turned out to be not the overseeing of the levee system but literally a tragedy of, "Oh, I'm afraid that was a negligent oversight by rank amateurs half asleep!" It is unfortunate that oversight has the double entendre of overseeing and not seeing at all.
With 50 citations in some 60 days preceding the Sago mine disaster, who was minding the mine officials who were supposed to be overseeing life-and-death items such as the presence of coal dust, loose coal, and working vents which continually siphon out the old air, not to mention the deadly methane gas steadily accumulating in all mines?
The coal mine parallel with the levee systems around New Orleans and in central and northern California is disconcerting and frightening. Propped up mostly by complacency and apathy, coal mine oversight or levee system oversight amounts to a literal oversight of overlooking which does not close the barn door until the horse is out of the corral.
Only God knows how many people were lost in the Katrina floodwaters when FEMA refused to accept rubber rafts and rescue aids offered them by the Department of the Interior. That terrible information is just now beginning to surface after five months. For the first day following the storm, some of the best rescue equipment was not on hand.
Thank God, there is some rational movement as we go into the sixth month after the wind blasts and floodwaters of the evil twins Katrina and Rita. Evacuation plans are falling into place for the use of school buses, tour buses, rapid transit buses, Amtrak and all available means of conveyance to get people out, even if only to nearby Hammond.
Preferred vehicles for the transportation of evacuees, rationalizations for the need of a predetermined destination to situate evacuees, and excuses upon excuses for not invoking martial law to physically remove everyone to safety are becoming moot issues. Just get the citizens of New Orleans out of the bowl! Go figure later for the next steps.
Speaking of alert oversight, a FEMA employee was grilling someone whose car had been under 8-10 feet of water for two weeks. After writing all the pertinent information, the agent advised the flood victim: "We need a mechanic's report on your car." That incident will surely do if you need something to shake your head about today.
Even as we write, there are congressional hearings taking place in Washington, D.C. on the role of Mayor C. Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Police Department and other officials in the management of the city during and after Katrina. The one question throughout the hearings is: "What went wrong?"
There is something categorically - category 5 - wrong with this picture when the biggest question afloat five months after the landfall of Katrina is, "What went wrong?"
While this belabored, overworked question aims to satisfy the finger-pointing penchant of a special U.S. senate committee, the same senate holds back on full aid to storm victims.
Southwest Air Lines is one of the great success stories of this country where we see how a large corporation is doing practically everything right. For the first time in its 37-year-old history, Southwest suffered its first-ever fatality when a 737 skidded off the snowy end of a runway at Midway Airport in Chicago on December 8, 2005.
Even then, the problem stemmed from our faulty airport system wherein hundreds of airports around the nation lack a buffer zone or other safety measures to guard against overruns such as that of the 737 at Midway. In other words, the runways are too short. And the solution? Longer runways, evidently, buffer zones and other safety measures.
With its 6,500-foot runways, Midway lacks 1,000-foot buffer zones at the end of its runways, just as nearly 300 other U.S. commercial airports around the country. Midway is all of one mile square, having been built in 1923 during the propeller era.
So, we need longer runways and/or beds of crushable concrete at the runway ends. Called beds, or Engineered Material Arresting Systems (EMAS), they have stopped three dangerous overruns three times since May 1999 at Kennedy Airport in New York. So, why is this effective system in place at only 18 runways of 14 airports? Apathy? Money?
And how do we swallow this pill? A secret Pentagon report found that at least 80 percent of marines killed from upper-body wounds could have survived if they had extra body armor which was available since 2003, but until now the Pentagon refused to give.
"Am I My Brother's Keeper?," we ask one more time. Wherever we are and whatever our profession, line of work or activity, do we pull our weight in providing useful oversight of the activities of our sisters and brothers? Will it take another disaster to awaken and alert us to the minefields and obstacle courses inherent in our daily lives?