Let's Play The Long Dark Story Mode - Wintermute - Blind
On April 5, 2010,
the Upper Big Branch coal mine—
known as UBB to locals in Montcoal, West Virginia—
collapsed after an explosion.
29 of the 31 miners on site were killed.
It was the worst mining disaster in 40 years.
In 2015,
Don Blankenship, CEO of the company that owned the mine, Massey Energy,
became the first top executive in history to be sentenced to prison for safety violations.
Just a few weeks ago,
Blankenship walked out of a halfway house after serving his one-year sentence.
He immediately launched a Tweet storm—
blasting regulators, politicians, and the government for his prison time,
and filed an appeal for vindication to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Then, the coal baron sat down with VICE News.
— I'd like you to tell me your favorite nickname given to you—
I'm trying to keep track of them.
— Yes.
Well, "the Dark Lord of Coal," right?
— That seems to be the one that stuck—
"the Dark Lord of Coal."
Huh.
That's a pretty good one.
When did you get out, by the way?
— May 10th.
— May 10th?
What's it been like?
— Well, it's been an adjustment, you know?
You get a year behind, it's hard to catch up.
— Yeah.
— I've been working on catching up and,
you know, connecting to people that were supportive,
and spending a lot of time doing it.
— Let's start on that day,
on the day of the explosion.
When you find out 29 of your guys died,
what's going through your head at this point?
— It's the worst thing that's happened in my lifetime.
There's no way to really describe it.
— The families are immediately hostile to you, correct?
— Yes, they're hostile to probably all the management at the time.
— We can see you're kind-of shaking right now.
What's going through you?
— It's just too much to say.
I miss my family.
This man has no remorse at all.
He never approached none of us.
He never told us he was sorry for what happened.
And he knows he could've done the right thing—
all he had to do was make one of them
40 phone calls a day he called checking on production
to say shut it down and fix everything.
But he refused to do it.
— Do you think that's fair?
— Well, I mean, I think it's normal.
I don't think you can expect the situation to be fair in regard to families or friends.
You expect fairness out of the media,
or fairness out of those that are observing it,
versus involved in it.
— So the federal government, in their report,
say this is, you know, your fault.
This is because of safety violations.
— If you read the text of the report,
and you get back in the body of it,
you'll see that they say the explosion might have begun with natural gas.
Actually—
— "Might" have begun.
— Yeah. — Yeah.
— But we know it began with natural gas,
because no one's ever seen that much natural gas
come out of a mine following an explosion.
It's actually ignorant,
to say that you can have 3.5-million cubic feet of natural gas
come out of a coal mine after an explosion
and that natural gas wasn't the energy source for the explosion.
— You know, it's funny though, because
the government says that it was not a natural gas explosion.
Is there no scientific evidence at all to support their case,
and how do they manage these reams of documents with no evidence?
— I can't explain to you why they do it,
or how they get by with.
I'm telling you without any doubt whatsoever,
this was a natural gas explosion.
— How many violations did you rack up in your tenure?
— I don't know how many I racked up in my tenure,
but other coal companies racked up more.
— But you racked up a lot.
— Let's be clear about something,
because this is something that y'all like to talk about.
Violations that have been incurred and been corrected don't cause explosions—
this is about the fact that the mine blew up because of natural gas.
— When one looks at this from the outside and you look at thousands of violations,
you look at 29 dead miners and you say,
"Well, that's... something's there," right?
— UBB mine had the average number of violations
that the 30 or so longwall mines in the United States have.
Violation count in the mining business is not indicative of the safety.
You get violations for…
a crack in the roof that occurs for water that gets in the mine during hard rains—
all kinds of reasons you get violations.
— What is it like for you,
being widely disliked, and you said that people accuse you of having blood on your hands?
— I can bear it,
and come on your program,
and go anywhere I want to say and tell the truth because I know I'm innocent.
I know who I am.
Prior to getting into battles with the union,
I was sort-of the local hero.
You know, I was top of the class in high school,
I was a baseball player in the coal field leagues,
I lived in the area.
But when you got into the battle with the union,
they blackened me.
And I think these people that will lie about what happened at UBB,
you know, they're not going to like a truth teller.
In addition to that,
they were able to take a political advocate out of the system.
I was probably the major player
in converting West Virginia from a blue state to a red state.
— You referred to yourself as a political prisoner.
— Yes.
— Why?
— I think when the President of the United States
declares you guilty before an investigation,
and then the former Governor, now Senator from West Virginia says you got blood on your hands,
that's pretty political.
— You're out of the game.
You're out of the coal mining business?
— Yes.
— Why?
— Well, I've been in prison for a year and I'm on probation.
— I think that you probably have enough contacts
and probably have enough money in your back pocket
that you could get back into it if you wanted to.
— Probably could.
But right now, my focus is to bring attention to the truth.
— Did you have any thoughts when you were in prison—
you had a year in prison, did anything change?
— I came out—
went in and came out a lot more knowledgeable of how corrupt the system is.
It's frightening.
I knew it from my personal experience,
as I went through the trial and went to prison.
But the guys I've met in there,
so many of them are the victims of the government charging people
because of a tragedy, so to speak,
you know, whether it's Savings and Loan,
you know, the bank thing,
whether it's an explosion,
whether it's Medicare fraud.
We've immunized prosecutors and we give judges lifetime appointments.
And whatever they do, they're immune.
And human nature is that,
if you're immune from punishment,
you have a tendency to carry out your personal beliefs instead of following the law.
It's a big problem.
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