Jay Rockefeller: “it is my honor today to join with my colleague Senator Byrd, who I am sure will be here very shortly. We are very proud…”

“it is my honor today to join with my colleague Senator Byrd, who I am sure will be here very shortly. We are very proud to announce that we are, as an entire West Virginia delegation, introducing the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 2006. The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster in West Virginia and across large parts of the country as we watched the damage and the pain and the crying and the anger because of a series of coal mine accidents that happened in West Virginia where 14 miners lost their lives and in the State of Kentucky where a miner lost his life. There is no real way of describing the sadness and the grief of being with families as they find out their coal-miner spouses are no longer alive. Everybody understands that coal mining is very dangerous, but you go in every day with the hope that it will be all right. It is a way of life. People ask, Why do you go into coal mining? They go into coal mining to keep the lights of America on and they do it to earn a good wage. What we have to do is make sure the legacy of these 15 miners who died--1 in Kentucky and 14 in West Virginia, 15 miners in all--is that we make sure this kind of tragedy never happens again. It is amazing to be in a coal-mining community when tragedy hits. People pull together amazingly, in Kentucky very much like West Virginia in that respect, and there is a sense of family. One person's loss is every person's loss.…”