12 miners found alive

[Sir EvilFreeSmeg]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/04/D8ETLLCO0.html
12 of the missing miners were found alive. The other one didn't make it.

[llad12]

Sometimes life gives you a raw deal ... sometimes fate smiles upon you and fear turns to jubliation.

There were, no doubt, tears of joy this evening at the West Virginia coal mines.

[Sir EvilFreeSmeg]

A correction needs to be made. The media got it wrong. Only one got out alive.

Imagine being the family of the men and being told they're alive and then finding out somebody lied. That mining company is toast. Too bad it can't be the media fried as well. Let's start with Geraldo

[DaviddeJong]

A correction needs to be made. The media got it wrong. Only one got out alive.

Imagine being the family of the men and being told they're alive and then finding out somebody lied. That mining company is toast. Too bad it can't be the media fried as well. Let's start with Geraldo

I just saw it on the news; sad story...
How nasty is that; how one (little) mistake can cause so much more grief!

(Sure the fact that people died caused the most grief; but I bet it hurts even more if you get the news just minutes after you've heard the opposite was true.)

David.

[Savage]

I was driving back from the coast today when we heard the first report saying that twelve of them survived. We all commented on their good fortune and how happy the families must be. When I heard the revised story a few hours ago I was pretty shocked, I can't imagine how the families must feel.

On the earlier news they played some audio of one of the family members talking about how relieved they were, and how they hadn't had much hope that any, let alone 12 would survive. No, I really can't imagine how that they must feel.

[Sergeant]

It hasn't been determined HOW the miscommunication came about. The company knew soon after the initial report came out that someone got it wrong but didn't report it because, at that time, they didn't know for certain how many died and how many got out alive. They only knew for certain that 12 didn't survive.

So who do you tell to celebrate? It was better to wait until the number of survivors/dead had been confirmed before issuing a new press release.

Still, it doesn't change how many died. The fact that the wrong information was released doesn't change what happened. It's not as if the wrong report caused 11 more miners to die.

The truth is still the truth, this seems to mostly be a case of information being passed along that was either wrong (as in not confirmed) or misinterpreted by whoever propogated it to the media.

I don't see how the mining company or media could be held liable for anything other than rushing information out before it was ready or only hearing what they wanted to hear. If the opposite had been reported... if initially they had reported 12 had died and it turned out only one had, no one would be up in arms about "miscommunication".

Once again people are looking for someone to blame. The whole "wrong information" thing is not as big a deal as it's being made out to be. They need to be focusing on the fact that someone did survive (is that fact so unimportant? What about that person's family who went from thinking he had died to being alive?) and what happened. Forget all the whining about the misinformation and stick to the real issue of WHY they died, not THAT they died.

[ragnar_ii]

It hasn't been determined HOW the miscommunication came about. The company knew soon after the initial report came out that someone got it wrong but didn't report it because, at that time, they didn't know for certain how many died and how many got out alive. They only knew for certain that 12 didn't survive.

So who do you tell to celebrate? It was better to wait until the number of survivors/dead had been confirmed before issuing a new press release.

Still, it doesn't change how many died. The fact that the wrong information was released doesn't change what happened. It's not as if the wrong report caused 11 more miners to die.

The truth is still the truth, this seems to mostly be a case of information being passed along that was either wrong (as in not confirmed) or misinterpreted by whoever propogated it to the media.

I don't see how the mining company or media could be held liable for anything other than rushing information out before it was ready or only hearing what they wanted to hear. If the opposite had been reported... if initially they had reported 12 had died and it turned out only one had, no one would be up in arms about "miscommunication".

Once again people are looking for someone to blame. The whole "wrong information" thing is not as big a deal as it's being made out to be. They need to be focusing on the fact that someone did survive (is that fact so unimportant? What about that person's family who went from thinking he had died to being alive?) and what happened. Forget all the whining about the misinformation and stick to the real issue of WHY they died, not THAT they died.

I agree with most of what you say, but the fact that they died is the issue. Why they died should be second. But it doesnt matter, like you said they are just looking for someone to blame.

[axeil]

We talked about this in AP Government today and the consenus was that no one was really "at fault" per se, but the company and the WV government should have done a better job of saying that the report that 12 had survived was currently not official and they were still doing things. The lack of ANY kind of statement would be the only thing you could take issue with and even then they have no legal obligation to release a statement.

[Amra]

Imagine being the family of the men and being told they're alive and then finding out somebody lied. That mining company is toast. Too bad it can't be the media fried as well. Let's start with Geraldo

I am sure it's not a case of someone lying.

I can picture that in this situation communications maybe were not the best and it was a misunderstanding.

Hopefully this can be prevented in the future. But I can tell you first hand that emergency communications by their nature can be problematic. Maybe one day a way can be found to prevent this but I am not holding my breath.