Slideshow: The Sago Mine hearings, Day One

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

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Multimedia presentation by Martha Rial, Dennis Roddy and Steve Twedt
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Questions about safety inspections, emergency breathing units, and what happened when lightning hit a tree dominated the first day of a hearing into the Sago Mine disaster, where the families of the 12 coal miners who died were given the rare opportunity to interrogate mining company officials.

More than 100 people attended the daylong public session in the gymnasium of West Virginia Wesleyan College. Questions from the miners' families were sometimes emotional, sometimes angry, making the first day of the hearings part memorial, part fact-finding mission.