Dave Foulk Internet Flyer

I can't imagine how awful it was for those families in West Virginia to have hope, then relief, and then everything snatched away from them in a moment.

Of course, I'm talking about the horrible mistake that was made, when somehow the families waiting on news from a mine explosion were told their loved ones were found alive, with only one fatality. Turns out, it was just the opposite, only one man had survived.

So who gets the blame for making the mistake of telling family members that the miners were found alive? We may never know. But I am sure that the person, or persons responsible know themselves what they did.

This event will be the object of studies in many journalism and public relations courses. I think it shows several things:

• The need for one person, and only one person who speaks for emergency crews and the company or persons involved in a crisis. There should be one place to go for information, and one person to give it. That human funnel's job is to make sure the correct information is given.
• Family members should have been the first to be notified about their loved ones. Why in the world did the Mine Company wait so long, knowing that the families were celebrating, when they should have been making funeral plans. Bad news is hard to break to people, but it was terribly wrong to delay it.
• Talking in "code" as they were inside the mine...such as "one item found" when they meant one person found...is extremely dangerous when communications equipment does not work properly. Better to talk "in the clear" and be clear. And why was a loudspeaker open to an entire tent full of people at the command post?
• There's a tremendous competetion in the news business, and newspapers are time conscious also...because of their web sites. The pressure on reporters at-the-scene to "get it first" is tough.
  
• Did reporters make a mistake by releasing the news? Not if their source had been reliable and official, such as a mine company executive, or someone with the rescue team, or better yet, from a family member who sincerely believed their loved one had been found alive, and had been told so by somebody...(who knows who, yet?)
• Mine work is complicated, dangerous, and tough. Few people understand exactly what happens under the earth. There were many common mis-speaks, the most often statement was that "oxygen" was being pumped into the mine. They meant "air". Oxygen would accelerate any fire, much more than air.
• And, we are talking about the middle of West Virginia, in a place that is not used to scores of reporters and cameras, and not used to dealing with that kind of magnifying glass scrutiny. It's easy to see how the claw for information could get out of hand.
  
• I really fault the governor's office for following rather than leading. Why didn't the governor assign someone to help the mine company with handling accurate information?