The coal king of Pepper Pike
Robert Murray of Pepper Pike is emerging as the perfect media villain in the Crandall Canyon mine drama — a spotlight-hogging, blame-shifting, anti-union, anti-regulator, anti-environmentalist Throwback Mine Owner, who despite all his bluster can’t get his six people out of the hole he put them in.
An irate Robert E. Murray, chairman of Murray Energy Corp. of Cleveland, which owns Ohio mines that have had safety issues, lashed out at the news media for suggesting his men were conducting “retreat mining” at the time of the cave-in. In retreat mining, miners pull down the last standing pillars of coal and let the roof fall in.
“This was caused by an earthquake, not something that Murray Energy … did or our employees did or our management did,” Murray said. “It was a natural disaster. An earthquake. And I’m going to prove it to you.”
However, government seismologists said that the pattern of ground-shaking picked up by their instruments around the time of the accident Monday appeared to have been caused not by an earthquake, but by the cave-in itself.
Murray last night announced that seismic activity had “totally shut down” rescue efforts and wiped out all the work done in the past day to reach the miners, believed trapped about 3.4 miles and 1,500 feet deep from the Crandall Canyon mine entrance. Rescuers were able to get within 1,700 feet Monday but had advanced only 310 feet more, Murray said around midday yesterday.
But, last night, Murray said, “We are back to square one underground. … There is absolutely no way that through our underground rescue effort we can reach the vicinity of the trapped miners for at least one week.”
In his briefing, an update of the Crandall Canyon mine collapse that was carried live on national television, Murray defended the coal industry, attacked the media and railed against what he called a foolhardy crusade against global warming that jeopardized his industry and America’s economy.
Murray insisted there was no way the collapse was not caused by an earthquake - “It was a natural disaster and I’ll prove it to you” - even though a federal geologist said Tuesday evening the collapse was absolutely not caused by an earthquake.
Crisis management and public relations authorities criticized Murray’s performance as “callous,” “damaging” and “not very helpful” to the families of the six miners trapped underground.
Rescue crews are now drilling two 1,500-foot bore holes — for air, communication and food — toward the area where they hope the six miners are still alive. As with the Sago disaster, a naive observer has to wonder why this isn’t standard procedure before people get trapped.
Nonetheless, let’s hope it works, and Murray is miraculously spared from explaining to the national media why everybody but him is responsible for six deaths. Spared, for example, from explaining this:
MSHA has issued 33 citations against the mine this year, including 15 citations in July. One of those citations, issued July 17, was for an alleged violation of 30 CFR Section 75.383, for failure to have a map posted or readily accessible to all miners in each working section and in each area where mechanized mining equipment is being installed or removed, showing the designated escapeways from the working section to the location where miners must travel to satisfy the escapeway drill specified in paragraph (b)(1) of this section. Another citation, issued the same day, was for an alleged violation of 30 CRF Section 75.380(d)(1), for failure to maintain each escapeway in a safe condition to always assure passage of anyone, included disabled persons.
As the Dispatch article linked above and today’s PD make clear, this is very much an Ohio story, and not just because Mr. Murray has a Pepper Pike address. Murray owns and operates Ohio’s two biggest underground mines, Powhatan #6 in Belmont County and the Century Mine on the Belmont/Monroe border. In 2005 (the last year for which the state has data online) these two mines employed over 600 of Ohio’s 1,700 coal miners, and over 900 of the state’s 2,500 total coal industry employees. Murray’s operations accounted for almost 75% of Ohio’s underground coal production, and 45% of all Ohio coal mined that year.
When you hear politicians of both parties promising to move heaven and earth to promote Ohio Coal, that’s Murray Energy coal they’re talking about.
(Not that Murray is a Strickland fan — or vice versa, I’m sure.)
P.S. The last time we heard from Robert Murray:
Meanwhile, this morning’s Crain’s has a subscription-only article about proposed mine safety legislation in the Ohio General Assembly — an article which consists mostly of quotes from the CEO of Murray Energy Corporation of Pepper Pike, explaining his “strong opposition” to any such legislation.