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Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul denegrated President Obama for critizing BP for the gulf oil spill, saying:

“And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen,” Paul said.

Some folks, like Paul, are quick to dismiss “accidents” as if they are a part of nature. And that is because the word is used in two completely different contexts; accidents that are avoidable and accidents that aren’t.

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Records show inspectors from the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing have issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or to shut down equipment because of safety violations since January 2009. Those records also show an additional 44 citations for safety violations that didn’t result in closure orders.

MSHA records show the mine was cited 840 times by federal inspectors for safety violations since January 2009, and 11 times closure orders were issued.

Since the start of the year, the mine has tallied 214 citations for federal safety violations, according to data compiled by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Sixty-five of those were deemed “significant and substantial,” indicating that they are “reasonably likely to result in a reasonably serious injury or illness.” Eleven of them are related to roof-support systems, the failure of which is the likely cause of last night’s collapse.

In recent years, miners have died in Alliance’s non-union operations because the company violated mine safety laws. A quick check of U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration reports revealed seven such incidents that claimed nine lives in the last five years alone.

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cited for 600 violations in less than a year and a half, some of them for not properly ventilating methane — the highly combustible gas suspected in the blast. Good ventilation was particularly important for the Upper Big Branch mine because it generated 2 million cubic feet of methane a day, higher than most mines

"There are mines in this country who have operated safely for 20 years," said J. Davitt McAteer, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton administration. "There are mines who take precautions ahead of time. There are mines who spend the money and manpower to do it."

He added: "Those mines haven't been blown up."

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Massey Energy says on its Web site that the company's safety record has been better than the industry average for six consecutive years, with its workers losing less time on the job through work-site accidents than its competitors. But in seven of the past eight years, Upper Big Branch miners lost more time on the job through work-site accidents than did other miners nationally, federal records show.

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Four Massey mines had injury rates more than twice the national rate last year. The national rate is 4.03 injuries per 200,000 worker hours. Massey's Tiller No. 1 mine in Tazewell, Va., had the company's highest injury rate at 9.78. The other high-injury mines are Slip Ridge Cedar Grove (9.18) in Raleigh, W.Va., M 3 Energy Mining's No. 1 (8.86) in Pike County, Ky., and Solid Energy Mining's Mine No. 1 (8.49), which is also in Pike County. Together last year, the 10 Massey mines with above-average injury rates received 2,400 safety citations.

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Paul’s comments show a lack of understanding of Eastern Kentucky, the region’s economy and of the history of underground coal mining in the region, where for generations coal operators strongly opposed efforts by workers to form unions. In Harlan County, deadly battles over union organizing helped earned the county the nickname “Bloody Harlan.” (Mr. Paul, when asked what he thought it was famous for, first guessed "The Dukes of Hazzard", then "The Hatfields and McCoys.)

"Working conditions in underground mines are dangerous enough with federal and state rules, Oppegard said. If the industry were unregulated by government, “There would be a bloodbath,” he said.

In 1931, when miners, working 12-to-16-hour days without any safety or wage regulations, tried to unionize. Beatings, shootings, bombings, and tear-gas attacks followed, much of the violence perpetrated by the local sheriff’s department, which was controlled by the coal companies. Eventually, after four people died in one gun battle, federal troops were brought in to keep the peace. Bloody Harlan has been cited as a major reason for the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which gave the federal government the power to regulate labor contracts.

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Massey's long list of citations has some wondering whether the federal mine safety inspection system works.

"Part of the strategy by the mine operators [is], 'Well, we're going to contest everything,' " says Bruce Dial, a mine safety consultant who spent 24 years as a federal mine inspector and inspection trainer.

Dial is referring to the citations and fines leveled by federal inspectors. In the past four years, he says, in the wake of the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, inspections, citations and fines increased. Challenging the citations delays the payment of fines.

"It takes so long to get [citations] through the review commissions, they don't end up paying fines until it's three, four, five years down the road," he says.

In fact, 16,000 citation appeals are pending right now, and they're worth millions in fines. Massey Energy alone, according to NPR's analysis, has had more than $7.6 million in fines. That's over five years at those 10 high-injury mines. The company has paid just $2.3 million of that amount so far.

One weakness in the system is the issue of liability for safety problems. Right now, she says, mine supervisors, foremen and mine companies as a whole can face criminal penalties for serious safety violations. That doesn't apply to company presidents or CEOs who were not directly involved in violations but who may have put productivity before safety.

"There will be a different safety culture if they know that there's a chance that they might spend six months in jail or they might have charges personally brought against them," Ellen Smith, owner of Mine Safety and Health Newsm says. "But at this point there is nothing in the law that would allow that to happen."

The law does permit the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to shut down a mine if there's a pattern of serious violations. But that kind of drastic action is rare.

Dennis O'Dell, health and safety director for the United Mine Workers union, compares the safety inspection system to driving drunk, but without the threat of a suspended license.

"I can drive, drink, I get pulled over, contest it, drive, drink, get pulled over and contest it until eventually I kill somebody or kill myself," he says. "And that's what's going on in the mining [industry]. And until we fix that, we're going to continue [to have] those operators who 'drive, drink and kill.' "

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