12 miners survive

[Tom Schindler]

Q, Maybe I am blind, but nowhere did I say there was a union bashing comment in this thread. Maybe you need to ask yourself that same question you asked me!





Tom

 

[Dre L]

Quit it both of you. People are dead, bringing up the union fight is inappropriate, even if true.



There's going to be plenty of blame going around, and enough aftermath to make life miserable for 13 families for a while. Then they'll be compensated and everything will be "all right", and another shaft will be dug. Something will come to light and we'll have a debate about the tragedy and/or unions some other time.



Just leave them with your prayers for now and respect the dead. Let's respect their mourning with some silence, prayers, hope, donations, whatever it is that any of you may do.

 

[TomT]

What happened here is not just limited to the coal mining industry. We recently had a BP plant explosion in nearby Texas City that killed 14 people. The plant had been written up for numerous safety violations before the explosion. It's all about greed and companies trying to save a dime at the workers expense. We need to hold companies accountable for there actions. Coal mining is a very dangerous occupation even when all safety rules are being followed.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Yup, it's a dangerous business. The men probably had some of the best paying jobs in the county. They new the risks, yet they went into that hole each day. There are many jobs that you just can't make much safer, IMHO; and please don't assume I am excusing any shortcuts in safety that were taken, if there were any. I am not trying to speculate, just to remind people as TomT and others have that mining is inherently risky and can only be made reasonably safe.



Good bless the families and may they rest in peace.



TJR

 

[Dre L]

What can I tell you. The twin towers had no sprinkler system because they were not NYC property and as such were not subject to the FDNY rules. Yet who responds to the emergencies? Then they wanted to build the new "Liberty Tower" (fugly pos) near the sidewalk again so that someone that couldn't commandeer a plane could have drive through convenience.



The Mayor in Texas City gave a speech following that blast "...this is a part of life in Texas City..." Yeah, uh huh, why not shut those sections with safety violations down? Like you said, there are some occupations that are by definition dangerous, safety violations should = shut down. How often do we need to hear the words "tragedy" and "had been cited for numerous safety violations" in the same news report?

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Nobleman says:

The twin towers had no sprinkler system because they were not NYC property and as such were not subject to the FDNY rules

Where did you hear that?



I heard that the Twin Towers in fact did have sprinkler systems, but they were ineffective because the water mains ran up the center of the towers and were in affect knocked out by the planes that crashed through the centers of the buildings.



TJR

 

[TomT]

Take it form a person that has done a lot of research on the Twin Towers and been to a lot of conferences on the subject matter. Sprinkler systems are only designed for incipient fires, not large incendiary devices and especially planes, so it's a moot point and a bad analogy by Nobleman. But the Texas City one he quoted is very true.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Correct, the Twin Towers had sprinker systems, but the systems weren't designed to prevent fires likes those caused by the jets that took out several floors of the inner core of the building and threw ignited jet fuel all over the place.

 

[Dre L]

Let me clarify. The towers were retrofitted with sprinklers which even if they weren't severed by the planes, would more than likely not have been sufficient to cool the steel, or stop the blaze, but who really knows, no one expected the towers to stay standing as long as they did. But you don't install sprinklers to stop airplanes exploding in an office, you install them to stop smaller fires from getting out of control. It's a basic safety measure.



I was recalling the 1993 bombing which caused a media uproar when it was found that the WTC lacked a functioning sprinkler system. That was 12 years ago, my memory might be fuzzy. It may have been partially functional, or just broken in some places etc... but it was a big story back then. Note the quote from the WTC report below. It says "retrofit circa 1990, nearly 100% covered by sprinklers on 9/11/2001."

When originally constructed, the two towers were not provided with automatic fire sprinkler protection. However, such protection was installed as a retrofit circa 1990, and automatic sprinklers covered nearly 100 percent of WTC 1 and WTC 2 at the time of the September 11 attacks. In addition, each building had standpipes running through each of its three stairways. A 1.5-inch hose line and a cabinet containing two air pressurized water (APW) extinguishers were also present at each floor in each stairway.



The primary water supply was provided by a dedicated fire yard main that looped around most of the complex. This yard main was supplied directly from the municipal water supply. Two remotely located high pressure, multi-stage, 750-gallons per minute (gpm) electrical fire pumps took suction from the New York City municipal water supply and produced the required operating pressures for the yard main.



Each tower had three electrical fire pumps that provided additional pressure for the standpipes. One pump, located on the 7th floor, received the discharge from the yard main fire pumps and moved it up to the 41st floor, where a second 750-gpm fire pump pushed it up to a third pump on the 75th floor. Each fire pump produced sufficient pressure to supply water to the pump two stages up from it in the event that any one pump should fail. Several 5,000-gallon storage tanks, filled from the domestic water system, provided a secondary water supply. Tanks on the 41st, 75th, and 110th floors provided water directly to a standpipe system. A tank on the 20th floor supplied water directly to the yard main. Numerous Fire Department of New York (FDNY) connections were located around the complex to allow the fire department to boost water pressure in the buildings.

 

[Dre L]

Oh, and no "analogy" was intended, only points of safety issues. I never mentioned 9/11, we have enough post 9/11 experts out there with blah blah this, blah blah conspiracy. I saw it. A big f'n plane hit and sliced into one tower, then another one did the same thing. Odd things happen when there is a 500MPH impact, explosion, 10000 gallons of jet fuel, and giant plumes of smoke that burn for days on end, and your hometown smells like sulfur for weeks. Smelled like road flares in the rain to be exact. Odd things like buildings falling, doesn't take a commision to figure that out.



It was built without a sprinkler system, they had a WTC fire in 1975 started by an arsonist, a bombing in 1993, no fire safety plan, just drywall. How much incentive do you need for sprinklers? Just on the merits of the thousands of occupants in the building, under the building, around the building, and the difficulty of evacuating that many stories, if someone cared, they would want an effective fire suppression system in place. It's hard enough to evac my 10 story office building.



Now as for the sidewalk thing, do you live in NYC? Do you see the makeshift barricades of concrete highway dividers and garbage trucks which border our target buildings? WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU TRY BUILDING ANOTHER TOWER ON THE SITE OF THE ONE THAT WAS ALREADY OBLITERATED... NEAR THE HIGHWAY WHERE YOU CAN DRIVE UP TO IT?



Not that it matters, the planes have proven more effective than any truck, but how about several trucks going 25 feet to the base of the building? No, common sense would indicate you barricade the road, barricade again at 25 feet, and set the building as far back away from those barricades as you can.



Bottom line, if someone cared, you wouldn't have tragedies where "...the company was cited for numerous safety violations, yet continued operations..." was in the news report.

 

[TomT]

Nobelman, I apologize. It just sounded like you were making an analogy about the twin towers and sprinkler systems. It's getting off the original subject but sprinkler systems do save lives and unfortunately many high rise buildings built before present fire codes do not have them. Personally I would not work in a high rise without them. Of course I wouldn't live in a condo or apartment building without sprinklers either. It just shows how builders control our codes and ordinances. It also shows it's not just the mining industry or oil companies putting all of us at risk. If that's what you were trying to say then I'm with you all the way. I recently started a campaign to have all new residential structures (which fire codes don't address) built with sprinkler systems locally. You would think I was asking the builders to pave the driveways with gold. They are only worried about the bottom dollar, not about saving lives. Even though they spend almost the same amount to install irrigation systems in the yard.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Thanks for the clarification Nobleman.



WTC 9/11 conspiracy theorists (the buildings were imploded; a missle hit the 2nd tower, etc) are a pet peeve of mine, so you seemed to feed into that. Glad you know what you are talking about.



I like the guy that had a website with the "Emergency Slide" for 100 story buildings.



TJR

 

[Johnny O]

I like the guy that had a website with the "Emergency Slide" for 100 story buildings.

Now that ride would be a rush.