Free Republic

It is often said that the really tough guys are the ones who get up and go to work every day. Without doubt, it is a group of really tough guys who go down into the mines everyday, out of sight and out of mind to too many of us, we who live in the day light and only think of them when something goes haywire, underground, in a faraway state.

PITTSBURGH — The critically injured sole survivor of the West Virginia coal mine explosion showed dramatic improvement Saturday and was stable enough that he was flown back to a hospital closer to his home, doctors said. Randal McCloy Jr. has been in a medically induced coma to allow his brain time to heal, but when the medication is eased, his eyes flicker and he bites down on his breathing tube, showing he is "awake underneath our coma," said Dr. Richard Shannon of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. "We think that he is clinically stable," Shannon said Saturday afternoon. "He is...

BUCKHANNON, W. Va., Jan 5 (Reuters) - The sole survivor of a mine disaster that killed 12 men lay in a coma on Thursday as residents of the tight-knit West Virginia community struggled to understand the latest tragedy in the history of this dangerous profession. But doctors feared that Randal McCloy, the only survivor among 13 miners trapped underground for 42 hours after an explosion on Monday morning at the Sago mine in Tallmansville, could suffer some brain damage as a result of his ordeal. Though mining disasters are nothing new, this one was made more poignant by the fact...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)--The Bush administration has extended a program that provides prescription drug benefits to 50,000 retired coal miners and miners' widows through Medicare. President Bush signed an administrative order Thursday keeping the pilot program going beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration until December 2005, United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said. Under the plan, the Department of Health and Human Services will increase its Medicare reimbursement to the miners' health care fund by $190 million, said Dr. Larry Fields of the federal agency. The additional funding also boosts the government's share of the beneficiaries' drug costs from 34 percent...