lost their lives call mr. obama misinformed. after meeting with labor secretary hilda solis and the head of the mine safety and health administration, joe main, president obama ordered immediate inspection of mines with shoddy safety records. the head of the united mine workers of america says president obama is taking an unprecedented public stance. the president, speaking in the white house rose garden earlier, calling the disaster at upper big branch mine a failure of management, government oversight, and laws riddled with loopholes. i refuse to accept any number of miner deaths as simply a cost of doing business. we can t eliminate chance completely from mining any more than we can from life, itself, but if a tragedy can be prevented it must be prevented. that s the responsibility of mine operators, that s the responsibility of government, and that is the responsibility of we re all going to have to
joe main and kevin strickland with the mine safety and health administration to lead an investigation into what caused the explosion at massey energy company s upper big branch mine. i asked them to report back with preliminary findings, this week. we just concluded a meeting where they briefed me on their investigation. i want to emphasize, that this investigation is ongoing. and, there is still a lot we don t know. but, we do know, that this tragedy was triggered by a failure at the upper brig branch mine and a failure first and foremost of management, but, also, a failure of oversight, and a failure of laws, so riddled with loopholes they allow unsafe conditions to continue. so today, i ve directed secretary solis and assistant secretary maine to press ahead with the investigation to help
skirt the system and get away with making sure that they got off, say, the bad list in time so that we would not have the ability to close them down. it s unfortunate what happened. this doesn t typically happen in most of the other mines. there are other mines that operate with larger numbers of people and have a larger operation but are not found in the same pattern of violation as this one mine, the massey upper big branch mine. and i think that the president is absolutely right, that we have to inspect all of our mines, and we plan to do that. i was there on the ground the day after the explosion, met with our investigators, and met also with the families. and i can tell you that even my staff, joe main who is the assistant secretary for msha and kevin strickland have lived through severe investigations much like this, and they tell me that people can live through this. people shouldn t assume that just because you work in a coal
safety agency to take essential steps to keep miners safe. if a mining company consistently violates safety standards, they should be subjected to the tougher enforcement that comes with being placed on an updated pattern of violations list. third, we can t just hold mining companies accountable. we need to hold washington accountable. that s why i want to review how our mine safety and health administration operates. for a long time the mine safety agency was stacked with former mine executives and industry players. the industry is now run, i m proud to say, by former miners and health safety experts like joe main and kevin strickland. even so, we need to take a hard look at our own practices and our own procedures to ensure that we re pursuing mine safety as relentlessly as we responsely can. in addition, we need to make sure that miners themselves and not just the government or mine operators are empowered to
29 lives were lost. families have been devastated. communities have been upended. during this painful time, all of us are mourning with the people of montcoal and whitesville and naoma and the coal river valley. the people of west virginia are in our prayers. but we owe them more than prayers. we owe them action. we owe them accountability. we owe them an assurance that when they go to work every day, when they enter that dark mine, they are not alone. they ought to know that behind them there is a company that s doing what it takes to protect them and a government that is looking out for their safety. in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, i asked the officials standing with me, labor secretary hilda soliz and joe main and kevin strickland with the mine safety and health administration to lead an investigation into what caused the explosion at massey energy