40. The Mine (Crandall Canyon Mine)

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At 6.31 a.m.

this morning, the power went out at the mine.

Shortly thereafter, at about 6.40 p.m.

the surface received a call from the one left section that indicated that they had lost power and that something had happened and that they were leaving the mine.

At that time, our mine superintendent began heading underground to investigate.

He also,

as he was underground, he told the dispatcher to begin the notification process.

After communications with the mine superintendent from underground,

within a few minutes after going underground, we began to understand

that something serious had happened.

and immediately efforts began to contact IMSHA and the state regulatory agencies in accordance with our process.

Around 5.50 a.m.

on January 2, 2006, in Sago, West Virginia, a team of 27 coal miners were preparing for their first shift of the new year.

The team split almost in half across two carts to be transported deep into the mine for another hard day's work.

13 men in the first cart began their descent into darkness.

The 14 and the second were not too far behind.

At 6.30 a.m., an explosion rattled the windows of the houses nearby.

The citizens of Sago and Buckhammon awoke to discover that there had been an accident at the mine where many of their family members and friends worked.

There wasn't much information immediately available, but there were reports that 13 men were trapped underground.

According to the miners on the second cart, the blast had knocked over concrete walls that were used to direct airflow.

They were able to reverse course and escape, but the first team was two miles deep and trapped on the other side.

Some of the members from the second team, including the foreman, whose brother was among the men on the first cart, tried to enter the mine to attempt rescue, but retreated when air quality detectors indicated that there were toxic levels of carbon monoxide present.

A discouraging sign.

But on the other hand, only the concrete walls had crumbled.

There did not appear to be any structural damage or collapses inside of the mine, which meant that the first team had not been crushed by debris.

There was a chance, a good chance, that the 13 men trapped inside of the mine were still alive.

A specialized rescue crew arrived at the scene 90 minutes later, and progress was slowed further due to the high levels of carbon monoxide and methane gas in the mine's atmosphere.

For their own safety, Rescue teams were forced to wait 12 hours before they could even try to reach the miners.

By the end of the first night, no contact had been made with the trapped men, and it was discovered that the atmospheric monitoring system was still operating inside of the mine.

There were worries that the electricity used to power the system could trigger another explosion.

They would have to try again the following day.

After a long second day of searching for signs of life, at 5 p.m.

on January 3rd, Officials for the U.S.

Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, announced another discovery.

A body had been found near the tracks, away from the cart, in a location that suggested that this person was the team's fire boss.

The other miners knew that it was probably Terry Helms.

IMSHA also announced that the cart used by the rest of the mining team had been found and it was empty.

A glimmer of hope that the men had escaped the deadly gas and found a safe place to wait for rescue.

The man bus used by the 12-man production crew has been spotted on the rail track approximately 700 feet beyond the first body location.

But none of the passengers have yet been found.

None of the passengers have been found yet, but it was now confirmed that the miners had not died during the explosion.

It was good news, and good news travels fast.

We want to recap this amazing story of survival.

Search and rescue teams have found tonight 12 of the miners who were trapped for nearly two days in West Virginia, found them alive and apparently able to walk on their own.

The miners reportedly still in the cave, but apparently they're doing all right.

The bell from the town church rang triumphantly.

The governor of West Virginia ran outside and alerted everybody within earshot about the miracle.

People celebrated in the streets.

The miners were alive.

They're all alive, all of them.

The miracle they prayed for happened.

12 of the 13 miners trapped after an explosion at the Sago mine in West Virginia were found alive.

Except the miners had not been found alive.

The miners had not been found at all.

The media had completely misinterpreted and misreported the news.

Rescue crews were still inching their way towards where the men were presumed to be waiting, but nothing was guaranteed.

And then finally, 41 hours after the incident began, on January 4th, 2006, the 12 remaining miners were found.

Eleven of them were dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.

They were discovered huddled together behind a ventilation curtain with goodbye letters to their loved ones folded in their pockets.

One such letter, written on the back of an insurance form by 51-year-old mine foreman Martin Toller Jr., read, quote, It wasn't bad.

I just went to sleep.

Tell all.

I see them on the other side.

It was announced that Martin Toller Jr., Tom Anderson, Jerry Lee Groves, James Bennett, Marty Bennett, George Hammer, Jesse Jones, Fred Ware Jr., David Lewis, Jackie Weaver, Marshall Winance, and Terry Helms were recovered from the mine deceased.

26-year-old Randall McCloy Jr.

had been found alive, but in critical condition.

He suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, a collapsed lung, brain hemorrhaging, and more.

Randall remained in a coma for more than 20 days and was unable to talk for weeks after waking up.

A few months later, after some additional recovery, Randall McCloy Jr.

wrote a letter to the families of the victims of the Sago mine disaster to share with them how their fathers, husbands, and brothers spent their last moments on earth.

Well, I try to leave out all the gory details and stuff like that because I don't like to look at them in that light and in that way.

You know, I just like to picture him

saved and in heaven and stuff like that.

In the letter, which was published by the Charleston Gazette, Randall McCloy Jr.

recalled details of the 41 hellish hours that his team spent trapped in the mine.

Randall said that after the explosion, which he did not remember, the men took turns beating on the steel bolts and steel plates with their tools.

trying to signal their location, but eventually gave up.

The physical exertion had the men breathing heavy and air that was not safe to breathe.

Randall said the men gathered in an area behind the curtain and shared their emergency breathing apparatuses with those whose own devices did not work.

They waited to be rescued.

They wrote letters to their families.

They made peace with their makers.

Randall watched as his co-workers, his brothers, collapsed one by one.

He watched as they slumped off of plastic buckets used as makeshift seats and fell to the ground.

Randall remembers remembers the room growing quieter as time moved on without them.

And then he too lost consciousness before waking up in a hospital bed 20 days later.

In this letter, Randall also recalled discovering a gas pocket three weeks prior to the explosion.

He said that he and Toller Jr.

reported the leak to their superiors and came back the following day to find that it had been simply plugged with glue.

A detail that provided more ammunition to those who had become convinced that the entire disaster could have been avoided.

The International Coal Group, who owned the Sago mine, disagreed.

This is ICG's president and CEO, Ben Hatfield.

I don't believe we did anything wrong that resulted in this accident.

That's just the truth.

Now, there are things about the aftermath of this accident that we could have done better.

Miscommunication is the key one.

That's one that I personally have to take responsibility for.

But with respect to the accident that occurred, there's no violation of the regulations,

no lapse in maintenance of infrastructure that points in any fashion to a causal connection with the accident.

And before the cause of the disaster was ever determined, the ICG announced that the mine would be reopened with federal approval on March 11, 2006, a little more than two months later.

The most widely accepted explanation of the explosion at Sago involves a lightning strike, which has been verified by multiple weather-related organizations, that ignited a sealed-off section of the mine that contained methane gas.

It's no secret that coal mining is a dangerous job.

Sometimes freak accidents cannot be avoided, but sometimes disasters can be.

And according to mine safety expert and former head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, David McAteer, who prepared the official Sago mine disaster report.

The Sago mine incident was an accident-turned disaster due to poorly equipped miners and substandard infrastructure.

Rescuers had no way to communicate with the trapped miners.

The mine's antiquated telephone system had been knocked out by the explosion.

The men could have been alerted that there was breathable air near the mouth of the section in which they were stationed, assuming that their location could have been pinpointed, which is another tall order considering the team was not outfitted with geolocation devices.

The Sago disaster could also have been avoided if the miners' emergency oxygen packs actually worked.

Instead, they were forced to share their limited supply with one another.

And finally, if the explosion had been contained using concrete seals that could withstand 20 pounds of pressure per square inch, as required by IMSHA's rules, not a single person would have died.

Instead, the Sago mine had utilized foam seals that could only withstand 5 pounds per square inch and which were approved by state officials in West Virginia.

To make matters worse, it was revealed that the owners of the Sago mine had been cited by IMSHA for violating regulations more than 200 times in the year before the disaster, 96 of which were categorized as significant, serious, or substantial.

And for those violations, the operators were fined a total of $24,000.

The families of the Sago mine victims wanted answers.

Today,

not only do I speak for my sister and my nephew and my entire family,

I'm going to take it upon me to also speak for the rest of these families.

We expect to get answers to these questions.

And so far, These answers have not come.

You know, only one miner died as a result of that explosion at the Sago mine on January 2nd.

12 survived,

and 12 should have been able to walk out alive.

Why they didn't, I believe, is a failure of our system.

The owners, if they had a family member in the mines, and I'm sure they would be the first ones to jump on the bandwagon with us and say, well, we need safety.

But, you know, all they think is the dollar.

Dollar doesn't mean nothing today.

When mine operators are reporting millions of dollars of profit and paying minimal fines, this is a problem.

The men go into these mines to produce coal for the United States.

Now it is the responsibility of the United States to protect these men.

And we assure you, Mr.

Politicians,

that we're not going to let this rest.

We know in our hearts this can be corrected.

And it needs to be done immediately.

It needs to be done now.

And it's on you.

It's on you to make the changes.

We rely on you to make for sure.

It can't happen again.

People's lives have been changed forever because of what's happened.

And you can't let this happen again.

No one needs to go through this ever again.

Criticism continued in the media, especially from the New York Times.

who published two editorials that linked the coal industry's cozy relationship with politicians on both sides of the aisle to to the deteriorating safety conditions in the mines.

Prior to the Sago disaster, a mining industry executive had been appointed by George W.

Bush to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration, while the Deputy Secretary of the Interior, a former mining lobbyist, devoted four years to rolling back mine regulations.

To quote the New York Times, the Sago mine disaster is far more than a story of cruel miscommunication.

The dozen dead miners deserve to be memorialized with fresh scrutiny of the state of mine safety regulation and a resurrection of political leadership willing to look beyond big coal to the interests of those who risked their lives in the mines.

My dad didn't have to die at his young age.

He could have been saved along with the other men trapped.

Technology is available and we must pass legislation that will force these mine operators to provide this technology to our miners.

They deserve it.

Their families deserve it because they need their fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, and grandpas to come out of the mines at the end of their hard day's work.

I think it's time that these mine operators focus on safety instead of their corporate profits.

After the Sago mine disaster, legislation was passed at both the state and federal levels that required coal companies to provide communications and tracking devices.

as well as additional emergency air supplies to the miners.

But four years later, Ilsher reported that a little more than 8% of coal mines in the United States had actually implemented the new technology.

In fact, some of the coal mine owners actively lobbied against the new safety legislation.

Owners like Robert E.

Murray, the founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation, who called the new laws, quote, knee-jerk and extremely misguided.

Bob Murray accused state legislatures of quote playing politics with the safety of his employees.

And as you're about to hear, Bob Murray knows all about playing politics.

A coal mining disaster in Utah places the mine's owner in the media spotlight, where he continues to defend his industry against obsolescence.

On this episode of Swindle,

they bribed government officials to find accounting.

Clear violations of decades they law clearly on ethical pay to play millions of taxpayer dollars that

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For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simply safe.com/slash swindled.

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We're typically underground a thousand feet.

People don't even know we're down there mining the coal.

So Murray Energy Corporation is exclusively an underground mining company in the United States with our 17 mines.

Robert E.

Murray began working in coal mines at 16 years old, just like his father, just like his father's father, and his father's father's father before him.

You get the point.

Coal mining was in Bob Murray's blood.

The mining business was where Bob Murray was supposed to live.

And more than likely, probably where he would die.

And in the 16 years that he spent underground, there was no shortage of close calls for Bob Murray.

He has been hit in the head with an 18-foot steel beam.

He has been trapped in a dark mine for over 12 hours before being rescued.

And he has broken his neck twice in mine-related accidents, just like his father had before him.

Well, actually, Bob's father had only broken his neck once.

In 1948, when Bob was nine years old, his father took a tumble down a stairwell and never walked again.

Luckily for Bob, his brushes with death did not leave him following in his father's wheelchair, but they did make him realize that it was much safer pushing papers behind a desk than descending into the depths of hell every day and shaking hands with the devil.

The pay was better too.

So Bob Murray obtained a degree in mining engineering and worked his way up the corporate ladder of the North American Coal Corporation.

He became the chief executive officer in 1983, a position he held until he was unceremoniously fired after a disagreement with the company's board of directors in 1987, the same year that Bob broke his neck for a third time in a car accident.

What happened next is a classic tale from mining folklore, a tale that has been repeated amongst miners, alluded to in mining publications, and apparently originated from Bob Murray himself.

Legend has it that Bob was sitting on his back porch at home, post-termination, licking his figurative wounds and contemplating his next move, when a squirrel, yes, a squirrel, approached the sad man, looked him in the eye, and said, Bob Murray, you should be operating your very own mines.

So that's what Bob Murray did.

In 1988, Bob sold his children's toys, mortgaged his home, and purchased his very first coal mine.

Powhatan No.

6 in Aledonia, Ohio.

The Murray Energy Corporation would set up its headquarters in nearby St.

Clair'sville, and in less than two decades, it would become the largest underground coal mining company in the United States of America.

The secret to Bob Murray's success wasn't much of a secret.

His company rapidly acquired other failing coal companies, which expanded his reach and workforce across the country, and in all of his new mines, he implemented a method of mining known as retreat mining, sometimes known as pillar recovery or long wall mining.

According to the Washington Post, when the retreat mining technique is utilized, pillars of coal are used to hold up an area of the mine's roof.

When that area is completely mined, the company pulls the pillar and grabs the useful coal, causing an intentional collapse.

In other words, the miners collapse the mine behind them as they work or retreat their way towards the mine entrance.

Sound dangerous?

That's because it is.

A study from 2003, conducted by the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health concluded that quote, mathematically, a coal miner on a pillar recovery section was more than three times as likely to be fatally injured.

Tony Oppogaard, a former top federal and state of Kentucky mine safety official, told the Oklahoman that retreat mining is quote, the most dangerous type of mining there is.

Retreat mining is also one of the most profitable types of mining there is.

It's incredibly efficient and extracts almost every last bit of coal that a mine contains.

Those pillars holding up the roof is nothing but pure profit.

And as an added benefit, any evidence of rule violations or cutting corners is buried in the rubble behind them.

For coal companies, retreat mining is a win-win scenario.

And Bob Murray was winning.

In the early 2000s, the Murray Energy Corporation and its subsidiaries owned at least 17 mines in Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Utah.

His mines employed up to 7,000 people at a time and produced more than 70 million tons of coal annually with sales totaling more than $800 million a year.

That squirrel must have been a goddamn genius.

Bob Murray had become a self-made coal baron with nothing but a good idea, hands-on experience, and a lot of hard work.

And according to Bob, He did it all without any major accidents at his mines in almost 20 years.

But that streak of good luck luck would come to an end in the early morning hours of August 6, 2007.

I'm absolutely confident as governor of the state that everything that can be done is being done, that the rescue efforts are in the hands of professionals, and that they are working jointly and collaboratively with the federal authorities who are here.

On August 6th, 2007, at 2.48 a.m., researchers at the University of Utah recorded a seismic event that measured 3.9 on the Richter scale.

The trimmer was pinpointed to a mountainous region near Huntington, Utah, about 140 miles south of Salt Lake City, a mountainous region near the Crandall Canyon mine that was co-owned by Utah American Energy Corporation and operated by Jinwha Resources, both subsidiaries of Murray Energy.

Hours later, the Emery County Sheriff's Department was notified that there had been a collapse inside the Crandall Canyon mine and that at least six men were trapped 3.4 miles from the entrance, 1,500 to 1,800 feet underground.

Now, the Lord has already decided whether they're alive or dead and whether they were killed from the percussion from the earthquake.

But it's up to Bob Murray and my management to get the access to them as quickly as we can.

Moments after the collapse, company officials and rescue teams arrived at the mine and organized a plan.

They would create a pathway to where the miners were believed to be, a tunnel encased in steel, timber, and chain-link fence.

And they would drill boreholes from above to supply communications, ventilation, sustenance.

Anything the miners would need to keep them alive indefinitely.

According to Bob Murray, they would be able to make contact with the trapped miners in a matter of hours.

No, it's not from the four miners.

We know from our mining experience that's where they are.

But of course, the miners have said that's where they are, too.

But those miners were out by this area when it happened.

So we know where they are.

Well, we're going to use more than one drill, that's for sure, if we can get up there, because I want to punch through there as fast as we can.

And it'll be a matter of hours, just a few hours.

We'll get through there.

Do you know what kind of rock it is?

Coal.

We're going to drill through coal.

It's going to be very easy.

But those hours turned into days.

Hi there, Bill.

Yeah, the search continues.

Hope is dwindling, but it is not lost.

They still believe they might find these six miners alive, although the effort has proven difficult and even more difficult by the day.

The late news last night was that they are back to square one.

The 300 feet of progress they had made in drilling into this mine to get to these miners was lost when some sort of seismic event, some ground shift or swell, basically eliminated all of that progress.

So now they have got to start back at square one and they are doing that in earnest in several different ways.

Additional seismic activity on the second day cratered the rescue team's tunnel and erased all of their progress.

This is Daryl Leonard, a mine supervisor in charge of the rescue.

We've supported the entries.

We advanced 260 feet.

The mountain acted up and it literally ran us out.

We had another major event and we came very very close to losing additional miners.

We pulled back and we regrouped and we're going back in now with additional precautions.

Meanwhile, mine owner Bob Murray was left to deliver the bad news to the press and the families of the men still trapped inside.

I don't know when the seismic activity may start again.

I really don't know how much rubble there is between where our recovery operations are

and where the trapped miners are.

But I know from my mining experience and from the opinions of my management it cannot be done in short of a week and it may be more.

A week may be more.

That is not what the victims' families wanted to hear but they had faith that the miners were alive and well.

I firmly believe that they're

that they are alive right now.

By no means do I think they're enjoying

what's going on right now with them

but I have full faith that they are in fact in there alive and breathing.

On day three, August 8th, 2007, the names of the six trapped miners were released.

Carrie Allred, Luis Hernandez, Brandon Phillips, Carlos Spayan, Manuel Sanchez, and Don Erickson.

Some of the men had been working in the mines for decades.

Others, like 24-year-old Brandon Phillips, had been on the job for less than a month.

The rescue efforts continued, but patience was growing thin.

We want the truth.

That's all we're asking right now, you know.

If there's nothing that they can do about it, you know, just tell us so that way we know what to expect when they bring them out.

I want answers.

Re-enter Bob Murray, the man with all of the answers.

Obviously affected by the growing criticism of the rescue efforts from the media and politicians, Bob Murray held a press conference that can be best described as a bit unhinged.

As I said, my name is Bob Murray.

I'm the founder,

chairman, president of

a company called Murray Energy Corporation.

I built the company from starting with a mortgage home.

The United States of America is a great country.

Unprompted, Bob becomes agitated and defensive about his livelihood.

He stands on his political soapbox, yells at the clouds, and even invites members of the press on a tour of his mines so that they would have a better understanding of the coal mining industry.

And every one of these global warming bills that has been introduced in Congress to date eliminates the coal industry and will increase your electric rates four to five-fold.

So we are an essential industry.

Many like to think that we're an old industry.

Indeed, we're a very high-tech industry.

And when this

tragedy

is all over,

I extend an invitation to all of you to join me and go underground in one of our coal mines right here in Utah

so that you can see for yourself what we do,

which is essential to the American economy.

Please

accept my offer.

Finally, Bob gets around to addressing the tragedy at hand.

First,

I want to report that the families are doing fine,

considering the circumstances.

This is a tragedy for them.

It's a tragedy for America.

It's a tragedy for me.

But

we've been telling the people the truth.

We've been telling the people the truth.

And we've been keeping

the families well informed and administering to their needs.

Now back to Murray Energy Corporation.

Murray Energy that I founded 20 years ago, and let me tell you something else.

This is the first major accident I've ever had in one of my gold mines in 20 years of being in existence.

The first major accident.

And this was caused by an earthquake.

Not something

that Murray Energy or Utah American did or our employees did or our management did

or that the Mine Safety and Health Administration did.

It was a natural disaster.

An earthquake.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Let's start with Mr.

Murray's claim that there had been no major accidents at his mines in 20 years.

Bob was probably under a lot of stress at the time he made that comment, but it seems he had forgotten that in April 2001, Thomas Sazewski, a 45-year-old foreman with 22 years mining experience, severed his arm on a conveyor belt at a Murray Energy mine and bled to death on the ground.

Partly because the mine did not have proper first aid equipment on hand as required by law.

Bob Murray's company was fined a total of $15,000 for that incident.

There was also that time in 2003 when another one of Mr.

Murray's companies was fined $300,000 for violating safety laws pertaining to dust levels at a mine in Kentucky.

And that time in 2006 when more citations were issued because one of Bob's mines lacked the required number of escape routes.

But perhaps most pertinent was the incident in March 2007 at the Crandall Canyon mine, the very mine where six miners were currently fighting for their lives six months later, when Bob Murray failed to report a rock burst.

that resulted in a partial collapse.

No miners or equipment were lost in that incident, and Bob Murray claimed he was completely unaware that it even happened, despite meeting minutes proving the contrary.

Which brings us to Bob Murray's next easily disprovable claim that the Crandall Canyon mine collapse was triggered by an earthquake.

And this was caused by an earthquake!

Officials.

It was a natural disaster.

Official.

An earthquake.

Yeah.

Yeah, we got it.

We got it.

Officials at MSHA were a little more careful with their words.

There's been some speculation that it may have been an an earthquake or a seismic event of some kind.

We don't know that as yet and our primary focus, our only focus is on reaching those miners and for the protection of the miners who are trying to get to that location.

We'll sort it out later on what caused the event.

But what caused the event had been sorted out pretty quickly.

within the first few days even.

And scientists had determined that the Crandall Canyon mine collapse was not triggered by an earthquake, no matter how many times Bob Murray repeated that misinformation to himself and to the public.

James W.

Dewey, a seismologist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, told the Washington Post that the data from the seismic event was, quote, more consistent with the collapse being the cause of the earthquake rather than the other way around.

According to the scientists, the Crandall quake occurred between 2,000 to 8,500 feet underground and at a different different frequency than what is consistent with a naturally occurring earthquake.

The data from the Crandall quake was more consistent with the side effects of retreat mining.

When reporters broached this subject with Bob Murray at any of his numerous press conferences, the coal boss would shout them down and insist that a natural disaster was the proven cause.

The area where these men are is entirely surrounded by solid, firm,

strong pillars of coal.

There was no retreat mining in the immediate vicinity

of these miners.

Retreat mining had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster that happened here, nor was there any retreat mining happening at the time of the disaster.

And I really am not going to respond to this retreat mining anymore

because because it is invented by people who have motives

that want to damage Murray Energy,

Utah American,

and the United States coal industry

for their own motives.

A week passed and no contact had been made with the trapped miners.

Holes had been drilled.

Cameras and microphones were lowered in.

Oxygen levels were low.

There had been no signs of human life yet, but the rescue team did find a survivable space in the chamber.

This is the Utah governor at the time, John Huntsman Jr.

All you can say is, or all you can ask yourself, is are we doing our very best?

Are professionals doing what professionals are supposed to do under the guidance of a federal agency that is expert in doing this kind of thing?

And to me, the answer is yes.

Is it frustrating that we have not had a successful outcome?

Of course, it is.

I mean, these are human beings.

Let us not forget that in the mine are six human beings.

This is a human event.

On day nine, Bob Murray kept his promise.

Much to the horror of every mine safety expert on the premises, Murray invited a group of reporters on a tour of the Crandall mine as the rescue efforts were still taking place.

We call this wire mesh.

When the concussion occurred

from the earthquake, it blew out these stoppings all through the mine.

Two things I want you to know that's very positive.

Number one, this roof is in perfect condition.

Second thing I want you to know is: look at the amount of ventilation going through here.

Huge amount of ventilation over top of this.

That's encouraging.

And in the middle of the tour, with the reporters three miles deep, a severe seismic bump shook the walls of the mine.

What was that?

That was a mountain bump.

That was a bump.

That was seismic action.

A reporter for CNN said of the experience, quote, frankly, this was very scary.

I have to tell you that I've been in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that was scary.

This was scary in another way.

But Bob Murray insisted that the part of the mine where the tour took place was safe, and he invited members of the victims' families to join him next time.

Tell you, no mistakes have been made at all so far in this recovery.

It's just going too slow.

Just too slow.

But there would not be a next time.

Two days later, on August 16th, 2007, at 6.35 p.m.,

a violent implosion inside the Crandall Canyon mine registered 1.9 on the Richter scale and buried nine rescue workers in coal and debris.

Three men were killed.

Six others were injured.

The rescue mission was suspended indefinitely.

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When I helped rescue the heroes Thursday night from within the mine, when I came out

the following morning, I told Mr.

Sticker, the Assistant Secretary of Labor, that that mountain is alive and that I have no plans to go back in there.

Gary Jensen, an IMSHA inspector, and two mine employees named Brandon Kimber and Dale Black lost their lives in the second Crandall mine collapse.

For Bob Murray, that was the final straw.

He announced that the underground rescue operations were suspended and that the mine would be sealed, entombing the six trapped miners.

The announcement elicited outrage from the victims' family members.

They protested the decision and cut off all direct contact with Mr.

Murray, choosing to communicate through the miners' union instead.

My brother is trapped underground.

And I'm hearing that they're

basically giving up.

And that's unacceptable.

Absolutely unacceptable.

We need him.

We need him.

I need to see my dad.

And

it's going to be extremely hard to continue if I don't get to you.

We were given a promise.

Dead or alive, those men will be with their families.

And now it's...

we can't.

Basically, we won't.

Because I know miners, and they're damn tough.

And they don't give up easy.

The protesters found support from Governor Huntsman, who stated publicly, quote, If it takes every dollar this guy has in his bank account, he needs to bring closure to this darn thing.

We've got families of six good people who are currently sitting in that mine.

The governor announced plans to hold hearings on the disaster and created a state commission on mine safety, all of which got under Bob Murray's skin.

The two men had been butting heads throughout the entire ordeal.

and it came to a head in a letter written by Bob Murray in response to Huntsman's latest comments.

As he usually does, the mine owner accused the governor of playing politics and damaging the reputations of mine operators and coal miners everywhere.

Quote, Governor Huntsman, I suggest that for your own sake, you address me as my employees do, as Mr.

Murray, as you have shown the ultimate disrespect to the heroes who have died and were maimed last Thursday, August 16th, and whose bodies I helped recover with my own hands in referring to me as this guy and that you are going to take every dollar.

If you persist in your statements and course of action, you governor are going to jeopardize 700 jobs in Carbon and Emery counties.

I cannot maintain them alone and I definitely cannot do it if I am going to be your whipping boy.

Nevertheless, Bob Murray buckled to the pressure from the families and agreed to drill two more holes in search of the miners.

I don't know whether the miners will be found, but I'm not optimistic they'll be found alive.

I did my very best, and we have for two weeks.

Ilmsha reported that the new holes were full of water and mud and other debris.

There was no way anyone could still be alive down there.

More than 25 days since the initial collapse occurred, all rescue attempts came to a halt.

The six miners were declared dead.

Their bodies were never recovered.

And despite Bob Murray's best attempts, the Crandall Canyon mine was never reopened.

The rescue mission was replaced with investigations and lawsuits.

In 2008, the Mine Safety and Health Administration concluded that because of flawed engineering analysis and failure to report early warning signs, the Crandall Canyon mine was, quote, destined to fail.

The result was a catastrophic outburst that violently ejected coal over a half-mile area in the underground mine tunnels.

Our committee, along with engineering experts working as consultants to the committee, has investigated the circumstances leading up to the Crandall tragedy to find out what went wrong so we can prevent it from happening again.

Based on our experts' analysis, I am able to conclude that it is likely that the tragedy was a result of a flawed plan for conducting retreat mining in the area of the mine where the deaths occurred.

Therefore, also based on this analysis, I am able to conclude that the plan should never have been submitted by the mine operator and should never have been approved by the U.S.

Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Based upon the work of our committee staff, I was concerned that the operator may have willfully misled the Mine Safety and Health Administration about information that could have affected that administration's decision to approve the mining plans in the South Barrier.

On July 24th, 2008, IMSHA fined Murray-owned Jinwawal Resources $1.34 million for quote violations that directly contributed to the deaths of six miners, in addition to nearly $300,000 for other violations.

The engineering consultant, Agapito Associates, was fined $220,000 for their faulty analysis.

And the federal government, who determined that they had been misled by Bob Murray, accepted its share of the blame.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is taking some of the blame for the Crandall Canyon mine collapse.

Yesterday, IMSHA said it had the chance to deny the mining plan for Crandall Canyon, but didn't.

It also missed warning signs that could have averted the disaster.

The statement comes following a Labor Department investigation that showed IMSHA did a shoddy job reviewing Crandall's mining plan.

It gave IMSHA 81 recommendations for improvement.

In 2012, Jinwa Resources and Agapito Associates settled for $950,000 and $100,000 respectively.

Jinwha also pleaded guilty in federal court to two criminal misdemeanors for its willful violation of mandatory health and safety standards at the mine and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine.

This is Wendy Black, the widow of Dale Black.

one of the rescuers who was killed in the second collapse.

What a waste of taxpayers' dollars.

This is a slap in the face, especially for the families of the six trapped miners.

We all want them here.

We all want the mines to be open and our people to have jobs.

We just want somebody to make sure that they're doing it as safe as they possibly can.

Today, there are memorials dedicated to the six miners and three rescue workers that lost their lives in the Crandall Canyon mine.

One at the mine and one in Huntington, Utah.

They serve as reminders of the sacrifices that blue-collar workers make every day to feed their families.

The entire civilized world depends on them.

The memorials also serve as a reminder of why the tragedy happened.

Corporate greed, gross negligence, governmental incompetence.

The entire disaster could have and should have been avoided.

And that's not something that a grieving widow or a fatherless child will ever be comfortable with.

But at least Bob Murray was comfortable, especially in front of television cameras.

Especially after the 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama, whose administration considered the bleak and unequivocal climate change projections from scientists all over the world and pushed for greener energy and tighter regulations on the coal industry.

Needless to say, Bob Murray was not a fan, which made for good TV.

He became a regular talking head on television news programs where he tried to spread the truth to the American people.

When Mr.

Obama was was in the Arctic announcing his

cost or his additional regulations, he didn't mention that the Antarctic ice shield in the Antarctic is larger than it has ever been.

The Antarctic issue is

larger than it's ever been, Charles.

Mankind is not affecting climate change.

The earth has cooled for 19 years.

The earth has cooled for the last 19 years.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

It's a natural cycle.

It's a natural phenomenon.

It is lies.

It's a propaganda campaign.

It is a fraud.

It is crony capitalism.

It is all about money.

What this is is a political power grab of America's power grid.

This is a very costly grab of the American power grid.

A power grab, political power grab of America's power grid.

It has nothing to do with the environment.

It has nothing to do with the environment.

They're trying to move the control of America.

That's what Democrats do, to Washington, D.C.

And once they do that, we lose our freedoms.

We do not have a climate change problem.

There you have it.

We do not have a climate change problem.

That's according to Robert E.

Murray, the founder and CEO of the Murray Energy Corporation.

That's according to the man who heads a corporation that might have a vested interest in the world's continued use of coal.

which, when burned, releases toxins into the air and increases greenhouse gases.

Bob Murray says the transition to alternative energy is nothing more than a political power grab of the power grid by those lousy, good-for-nothing Democrats.

So I guess that's it.

You heard the man.

It's a natural phenomenon.

There's nothing we can do.

Might as well pull up a chair on the beach, sit back and wait for the oceans to boil.

Bob Murray is so sensitive to global warming talk that he even lashed out at the Pope after the Holy One called for for action on climate change.

I would tell the Pope that you have been misguided, sir.

And as a Christian, I care just as much as you do about the poverty-strickle people around the country.

But you're encyclical, your policy, is going to condemn more of these people to poverty.

That's right, Pope.

Bob Murray cares just as much as you do.

about the poverty-strickle people.

In fact, you two probably have a lot in common.

Maybe the coal industry should take a page out of the Catholic Church's book, the Other Book, to try to rebrand and repair its image.

Get a newer, younger, hipper figurehead that displays a little bit of social progress.

And maybe we can just forget about all those years of harboring and enabling child molesters, or in this case, polluting the environment.

What if instead of calling it coal, we call it clean coal?

Nah, that's probably not going to work either.

But it doesn't matter, because Bob Murray and the coal industry survived the Obama administration.

Just barely, according to him.

And there was an epic showdown on the horizon in 2016 that would potentially reshape America's regulatory landscape and save the entire coal industry.

Just in case there were any questions about which side Bob Murray would be endorsing, this should clear it up.

But again, if you were given that choice, a tuna sandwich, Hillary Clinton, what would you pick?

I wouldn't pick her or

Sanders.

I would definitely take the tuna sandwich, sir.

Wow.

Boy, they weren't kidding.

It was the dawn of a new era.

Donald J.

Trump won the presidency.

Coal miners could go back to work.

America was going to be great again.

For the first time in a long time, for the coal industry, hope was in the air, like a thick black cloud of smog.

This is a victory for the working people of America.

They saw through this, and that's what happened.

These quiet,

independents,

working people, men and women,

Reagan Democrats, they're the ones that elected.

I believe that Donald Trump has the courage

and the ability, and he certainly has the mandate to put a stop to it very, very quickly and to have a plan the day he enters office to undo the evils that Obama has reaped on these people, these coal miners.

They don't want Hillary Clinton's welfare.

They want jobs and they saw through that and she's gone.

Trump did have a plan for the coal industry because Bob Murray wrote it for him.

Just weeks after the inauguration, to which Bob Murray had generously donated $300,000 in a private letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence, Pence.

Murray included a wish list of environmental rollbacks that would give a boost to the coal industry.

I have a very close relationship with President Trump.

He's done wonderful things for the coal industry.

I've met with him three times at his request in the last three months.

We've been very engaged in the transition

in identifying those regulations of the Obama administration that need to be eliminated.

The Murray Action Plan, as it became known, suggested cutting the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency in half and ending regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and more.

Donald Trump fulfilled more than half of Murray's request in his first two years as president, including undoing the Clean Power Plan and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.

And the president's cabinet was full of mining lobbyists, like new Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the founder of ICG, the company responsible for the Sago mine disaster.

Hillary wanted to put up wind.

Wind.

If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations.

Your house just went down 75% in value.

And they say the noise causes cancer.

You tell me that one, okay?

Windmills do not cause cancer, but it doesn't matter because coal is back in business, baby.

Bob and Berry can now focus on more important things like suing television comedians.

We become a very polarized, vitriolic society where civility, respect, and honor often are simply just trashed.

This is the case

in Time Warner's and home boss offices' attack on me,

our company, and Cole.

And since this broadcast, Murray Energy and our employees have been harassed and damaged every day since that broadcast of these deliberately untruthful and concocted statements.

In June 2017, Bob Murray filed a defamation lawsuit against Time Warner and HBO in response to a segment featured on the show last week tonight with John Oliver.

Murray alleged that Oliver's segment on Cole, which compared the mine owner to a geriatric version of Austin Powers villain Dr.

Evil, and concluded with the man in a squirrel suit instructing him to eat shit, Bob,

was an assassination of his character, and that it incited viewers to do harm to his company through prank calls and a hacked website.

In response, Jamie Lynn Crofts of the West Virginia ACLU filed a hilarious amicus brief in Oliver's defense that featured a side-by-side photo comparison of Bob Murray and Dr.

Evil with section headings that read, quote, Anyone can legally say eat shit, Bob.

And quote, all of John Oliver's speech was protected by the First Amendment.

You can't sue people for being mean to you, Bob.

That's correct.

So, eat shit, Bob.

A whole bowl of it.

Now, it is obvious that Bob Murray is sensitive to media skewerings, considering he has filed dozens of defamation lawsuits against journalists and newspapers over the years.

And he continues to do so.

even though he has lost every single one of them, including the one against John Oliver.

So, I would like to take this time to remind Bob, can I call you that?

You can find all of the sources for this episode about you on swindledpodcast.com, which means that I am not reporting anything new.

This is derivative.

The information is already out there, so don't sue the messenger.

Because I'll win, and it will just be a waste of time for the both of us.

And let's face it, you are an 80-year-old former coal miner, dragging an oxygen tank behind you.

It doesn't look like you nor coal have much time left.

So use the remainder wisely.

That's what the rest of us are trying to do.

Also, besides the shit, I think you have bigger things on your plate to worry about.

America's largest private coal miner is seeking bankruptcy protection despite being granted regulatory breaks by the Trump administration.

Former CEO Robert Murray said the move was necessary to best position the company for long-term success.

You hate to see it.

Turns out, government regulation wasn't the only threat the coal industry faced.

Turns out the free market had decided the fate of coal a long time ago.

Demand has fallen and continues to fall.

Natural gas is cheaper and only getting cheaper.

And there's nothing that Bob Murray or President Trump can do about it.

It's a losing battle against the inevitability.

like a miner trapped in a cave.

In fact, in 2017, Murray wrote a letter to Trump begging for an emergency order to protect coal-fired power plants, but his pleas went ignored.

Bob Murray was the one left screaming into the void for once.

Murray Energy filed for bankruptcy on October 29, 2019.

Murray Energy made the move in order to restructure $3 billion in debt it had accrued from recent acquisitions.

As part of the agreement, Bob Murray will relinquish his roles as president and CEO.

His nephew Robert Moore will take over.

The sad part about it is that there are entire communities that depend on these coal mines, communities that are unprepared to transition into other lines of work.

The men and women who have sacrificed it all for their companies will be left behind, like usual.

And we can't expect them all to learn how to code.

They're going to need help and retraining, and they're probably not going to receive it from the mine owners, the people that claim to care about them the most.

Only recently, after years of battle, have retired miners been able to secure health care benefits through the Miners Protection Act.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for their pensions, which could potentially vanish into thin air as more of these companies close.

People like Bob Murray will continue to declare bankruptcy and run home with money spilling out of their pockets, while the truly deserving will be left to fight for what is rightfully theirs.

So we've got people going to lose their pensions or reduced immensely with no fault of their own.

And we've got to fix that.

And we have a fix in place that would take care of it immediately.

But right now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is not bringing the miners' pension bill up for a vote.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at SwindledPodcast.

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