mullentown » Blog Archive » Hard as Coal
Did you all see this guy this morning during his rant outside the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster?The screaming bald guy would be Robert Murray, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp., of Cleveland, Ohio. I didn’t get to see him on live TV today, but did listen on the car radio to 90 percent of his news conference in Huntington, Utah. My first thoughts were to cut the guy some slack because he is in shock, is sleep-deprived and deeply worried about the fates of the six coal miners trapped some 1,700 feet below the surface of the caved-in mine. But then…
… He spent the majority of his time berating the news media for trying to report whatever tidbits they could grab on tight deadlines, and highly limited by Murray’s own staff and security goons who my reporter friends tell me have been very stingy in sharing information. He blasted geologic experts for discussing the cave-in as the reason seismic equipment may have registered the event as if it were an earthquake. “IT WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE,†Murray bellowed, a couple of times.
With a pointer like that, I had to go looking for the video, and although I’m sure someone out there has got the full length rant, this clip (hosted by the annoyingly fresh-faced Tucker Carlson) includes the remarkable statement that if the miners are dead, they were “killed by the percussion” of the (supposed) earthquake that caused the cave-in. Seismic experts are being more circumspect, but NPR’s piece on it this morning included some information about how this particular mine operates – and it’s a method that’s not considered terribly safe. Also, they think the collapse is what registered on their seismographs, and not a naturally occuring earthquake at all.
As Murray points out, no one knows at the moment if the miners are alive or dead, but somebody needs to get this guy to a secluded location, far from a phone or a news conference. He’s not doing his company or the families or the miners any favors by dwelling on death and rescuing those miners dead or alive… and as one of Holly’s readers points out, if they’re dead, retrieving the bodies is a RECOVERY, not a rescue.
Yes, Mr. Murray needs some down time, and also needs to stop making with the percussion on the poor pony, too.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/3aoj14qqp20" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]
[tags]Utah, coal mine, Crandal Canyon, Robert Murray, percussion[/tags]
Murray is an idiot. You should read Rebecca Walsh in the Trib today. His “special reports” are always the same and very redundant. There is some speculation that there really wan’t an earthquake but he is so adamant that there was and the aftershocks keep the people from getting to the miners. The UofU seismic center can’t confirm aftershocks. The drilling is going better and they may get to where they think the miners are some time today. They have tried to have a Federal Agent give the updates but old Murray says it’s his mine and he will damn well do the updates. God help the miners.
They had him on NPR again this morning and he was just as stupid as ever. They even dug up an old interview with him from about 1990 or so, and he was just as stupid then about “God meant for me to own this mine” because at the time, he’d just bought one near where he grew up. What a nidjit.
The experts are sounding a lot more sure of themselves as far as the “earthquake” bit.
Are you so emotionally retarded that your ability to hope or even act with a little faith can come only if you find inspiration in “The Soundtrack”? Can you do nothing new? this really is it? I suppose your silly little joke of intellect is on me.
I hope the miners are alive. I hope that Mr Murray stops making things worse for everyone. I hope that you are not a family member of one of the miners, because that would be a truly horrific and terrible burden. And I hope you realize that if you are not, you are wrong about a lot of things.