"We Found Them"

The rescuers announced that in a radio communication to the command center. Someone over heard that message... mininterprated it to mean "we found them alive". Then took it upon themselves to call a family they knew at the church. It was the kindergarten rumor game at the worst possible time. Most places are reporting that the families didn't find out for three hours. In fact it was two, and there were rumors circulating around as little as 30-minutes after the initial news.

The families are beside themselves and should be. They're blaming the company.

There's a problem though.

The company didn't tell them, an individual did. The company never told anyone anything. People keep asking what took the company so long to correct the error. I can shed a little light... for one thing the folks in the command center had no idea that the families had been told anything. They hadn't told anyone anything... they were playin' it close to the vest. The local word is a lot of time past before they had any idea that the media was tellin' everyone about a miracle.

Everyone is gonna point a lot of fingers... but the fact is those boys were riskin' their lives tryin' to get to those miners, and they got there in time to save one of them. That's a miracle people. They got someone out of that hell alive.

They didn't miss by much. With better equipment they may have gotten there sooner. That's where folks need to be looking. Do we have the best of the best?

I'll wager we do. But we need to take a hard look at it.

Here in West Virginia its all about blaming the company. Any company... for anything... for everything. In this case... I have doubts about the validity of that blame today.

***Update***

The youngest miner is the one that survived. He's 27-years old and has been mining for 3 years. He's at the hospital here in Morgantown and word is there is no carbon-monoxide in his blood. They're having a press conference about his condition here in a few minutes. A press conference... Hrm... Can someone explain how that's not a HIPPA violation? Patient confidentiality and all that?