WV Mining Disaster: "For unexplained reasons..."

From today's Washington Post:

For unexplained reasons, it took several hours to tell the families that the good news was all a big mistake, a huge mistake.

I know I'm not the only person who wondered why the Sago mining company's rescue attempts seemed way too slow and overly complicated: digging 3 separate tunnels, moving inches at a time in order to monitor the air quality for rescuers, and trotting out CEO Hatfield to keep the possibility of a "miracle" alive.

In fact, I wondered if the extended time frame and the exhaustive rescue attempts were used to prepare the families and the nation for the inevitable bad news.

I was wrong! 12 survived! The church bells are ringing!

Scratch that. Only 1 survived, and he's in critical condition.

Miscommunication?

The families now report that they were personally told of 12 survivors by CEO Hatfield at midnight on Tuesday... even though Hatfield knew 20 minutes after the initial report that at least 12 had perished.

Families were told by CEO Hatfield that their loved ones would meet them at the church. And the governor was so elated by Hatfield's news that he left town.

I had a question for CEO Hatfield, though. Why wouldn't these survivors first be transported to the hospital for medical attention?

3 hours pass...

Now we learn that the families, gathered at the church to celebrate, were told that there was only one survivor.

Now we learn that the mining company waited at least 3 hours to correct the "miscommunication" story: first, they blamed the command center for "miscommunicating" to the CEO; next, they blamed the rescuers for "miscommunicating" to the command center; and they let the governor leave town believing his prayers had been answered.

At my house, we think someone needs to answer for this mining disaster, the subsequent "miscommunication," and the horrible treatment of the families.

And don't get us started on the media's body-chasing fixation.

Miners Alive: Rita Cosby Live In WV

MSNBC was third with the breaking news, even though The Situation with Tucker Carlson was live at 11pm. The cable net seemed caught off-guard; it relied on a dull live shot of the mine entrance and tape from earlier in the day.

At midnight, Rita Cosby hosted Live & Direct from WV. She was joined by Ron Allen on-set and Bob Hager on the phone. She interviewed several family members via phone. Tom Costello was on the phone from the church around 12:25am.

> Update: 1:23am: I'm pretty sick of seeing this stagnant image of a mine on MSNBC. An e-mailer says "MSNBC's coverage seems the most lacking video of the cable news networks. Just now they went to generic file footage of miners and mine shafts."

> MSNBC made a good move at 2am: Bill Fitzgerald started anchoring from MSNBC HQ and Rita Cosby was treated as reporter.

The families are now saying, "We were lied to all along."

A sad, sad story, indeed.

File this under: I'm mad as hell about this! Aren't you?