Page 74 - Ellen Smith News Today

>> so what does it take to shut down a mine because of safety concerns? ellen smith, owner of mine, safety and health news joins us next to talk about just that. were back in a moment. were in the cnn newsroom.

That msha issued. in one case it was $70,000 and in another case it was over $60,000 for two ventilation violations recently in january. so theres the financial consequence of the penalty and then theres the consequence of not producing coal. so that -- there is that stick there, but as far as just shutting down a mine for a month saying thats the penalty for all these violations, msha cant do that. lets leave it there. maybe thats something that needs to be revisited. >> ellen, thank you. well ...

Happened. thats the bottom line. >> that is the bottom line on that. ellen smith, thank you very much. i just got word, the associated press is reporting that massey executives, the owners of that mine, say that the officials are testing the mine air to see if it is safe to resume rescue. they have rescuers actually on the scene ready to go inside the mine, itself, if the air quality is safe for them to do so. well keep you up to date on that. police in south florida say they have surveillance...

Making the miners leave the mine or sections of the mine because of violations and thats whats most troubling. >> so basically youre saying the mine was shut down so, ellen, youve got people watching this news coverage wondering how then could that mine stay hope? >> because the agency will shut down, for instance, if theres a ventilation violation they may make all the miners withdraw from the mine, leave the mine, the company has to correct the ventilation, and then the miners can go back in a...

York. ellen, are all violation created equally? >> absolutely not. i mean, thats the whole problem. its not a problem about the mine act, but its the way the mine act was written. you could get a violation for having a lid off of a garbage can or for a maintenance worker leaving rags around a piece of equipment and you can get a citation of violation for not adhering to the ventilation plan. that goes into a big pot so you have to sort out the individual violations. >> why is it done that way? t...

Guess is emsha is going to take a hard look at what it could have done differently as a regulator and were going to be looking at the company. yeah, the company is under a microscope and rightly so. weve got 25 dead. bill: these companies are always in the crosshairs of matters like these and as you point out, rightly so, again. ellen smith out of rochester, new york, we will speak again. a terrific guest. thank you for your insight on this topic. we know folks are following this story online,...

Ventilation problems, excessive dust and methane gas -- all of which obviously kills people. massey has aggressively fought off hefty fines, by the way, by drowning federal regulators in appeals because coal mining is so profitable, it costs about half of natural gas. you can save a lot of money for lawsuits and lobbying. a bill established to improve mandatory safety standards for coal mining has been stalled in the senate since the last session. its called the "s" miner act and the house of re...

Back the history of this e mroegz and maybe its something that should have known was a distinct possibility, but as many mine officials and health and safety officials have told us, explosions like this are preventable. >> im a bit haunted by the words from kevin strickland yesterday and they were echoed by governor manchin today that something went really wrong down there and thats stating the obvious, to be sure. all right, john appreciate it. >> no question about that. >> john roberts for us ...

None so far. once searchers can get inside the mine, the dangerous part begins then, crews will have to navigate through pitch black darkness and debris shattered by that blast. elin smith -- ellen smith, we welcome you to "americas newsroom". how can they survive this? >> you know, the miners at the sago mine survived the initial blast, and no one thought they did, so there is a chance that, you know, these four miners that they havent found did survive, although, you know, these are dire, dire...

Survive blasts like this and we would have post-accident communication, and were back to doing what theyve always done, which is hoping that they can hear pounding on some pipe, and its sort of unbelievable that this is still going on in 2010. bill: four years ago at ago, randy mccloy was found alive, the others were dead, he survived after 41 hours. ellen, right now were 42 hours into, and some doctors are saying theyre still not able to explain how he survived that. >> well, thats correct. now...