They also disrupt ventilation pathways in the system and block exits in a disaster. Sparks created by the falling roof can ignite pockets of methane, and falling roof increases explosive dust levels.

The mine’s long-wall mining system and automated controls were designed to reduce the number of miners directly at risk. Unfortunately, these systems are often highly unreliable indicators of what is really happening underground. At Sago, for example, automated carbon monoxide alarms could not distinguish diesel exhaust from a real mine fire. When an alarm sounded, workers in the control room called miners underground to determine the cause of the alarm. When the explosion occurred, all alarms sounded at once, but the alarms were too late to save miners’ lives.

Automated mining systems may also circumvent hard-won safety regulations and common-sense mining precepts. Previously, for example, conveyor belts in ventilation shafts were not permissible — for good reason.

Conveyor belts carrying coal to the surface produce potentially explosive dust. The friction of rubber belts also creates a fire hazard. Ventilation moves clean air from the surface downward into the mine. In a belt fire, the ventilation feeds the fire, and miners are potentially trapped inside the mine. In the 2006 Aracoma Alma Mine accident — two weeks after Sago, two miners died when a belt fire produced thick black smoke in the ventilation shaft that was supposed to provide a fresh-air escapeway — despite automated warning systems.

As the Upper Big Branch mine disaster demonstrates, disasters are costly in human lives, first and foremost. but also in recovery costs and in their emotional and economic impact on the surrounding community. After the recovery, the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the West Virginia Department of Mines will determine the technical cause of the disaster.

In speculating about the cause of the disaster, we are reminded — again in hindsight — that such loss need not be inevitable.

The second reason mine safety reforms have failed is the political power of the coal industry. After every coal mining tragedy, there are passionate calls for new safety rules and regulations. After those reforms are proposed, they are fought over in Congress and state Legislatures, where politically connected coal operators make the case that the reforms are too onerous, too expensive, too difficult to implement. And so they are watered down, loopholes are inserted, timelines extended.

This is particularly true in West Virginia, where Don Blankenship, the head of Massey Energy, the coal company that owns the Upper Big Branch mine, holds sway over state politics there like one of the old coal barons of yore. In West Virginia, you mess with Don at your peril. If you want to know why a mine with a sorry safety record like Upper Big Branch wasn’t shut down long ago, that’s your answer.

Indeed, the real lesson of this tragedy may be that the best way to make mines safer is to make politics cleaner.

The reasons are varied. Most laws have not been passed without reformers being joined by the leading, often large, companies in lobbying for laws. The new laws establish practices that the leading companies have already adopted.

The new requirements therefore only enhance safety for a small share of workers. Hiring inspectors is costly, and legislatures have balked at spending large amounts on enforcement.

Progressive Era legislation called for relatively small fines for violations, although modern fines are much larger. In addition to regulation, anticipation of stock price declines and bad publicity from accidents provide some non-regulatory incentives to prevent more accidents.

Workers’ compensation insurance requirements provide employers some financial incentives because they pay lower premiums in safer mines. Given that inspectors arrive intermittently, prevention of accidents is largely determined by the daily efforts of employers and workers to follow the effective work rules they develop.

Compared to the past, mine accidents have become increasingly rare events. As a result, each death receives far more national attention and serves as a harsh reminder of the necessity for mines to redouble their efforts at prevention.

So the trend line shows clearly that regulatory agencies are the lifeline for miners. But over the past 10 years or so, the trend has not improved because the mining industry reflexively fights every minor safety regulation or improvement by the government.

In 2006, an investigation by the West Virginia Gazette showed that 90 percent of mine deaths could have been avoided if safety regulations had been followed.

The next year, the Government Accountability Office found that between 1996 and 2007, over half a million individual penalties for mine safety violations were written up by Mine Safety and Health Administration, but the average fine paid by industry, in the end, was only $234 per violation. By any standard, this is extraordinarily lax regulatory enforcement.

Why is this happening? Three factors stand out.

Appalachian people are have been historically oppressed, with ugly stereotypes used to justify their mistreatment.

The history of coal mining in Appalachia shows over a century of constant violence against those who have stood up for human rights, for labor unions and for other reforms. The coal industry has been allowed to punish reform advocates with impunity, and even very recently there has been an escalation of violent rhetoric against reformers. Cooler heads are not prevailing.

Coal is an extremely lucrative business, but because of the legacy of Appalachian energy feudalism, the industry’s financial power is more often used to capture regulatory agencies and appeal for Congressional support than it is to finance meaningful reform itself.

Also, the external costs of coal, in terms of human health or the natural environment, have never been reflected in what consumers pay to keep the lights on. For example, the costs to the U.S. government of treating black lung patients have spiraled up to unprecedented levels, while the direct costs of environmental disasters, such as the T.V.A. ash spill, are also assumed by the government and not the industries in question.

Without any major reform since 1977, what incentive does the coal industry have to change?

Tragedy often spurs public officials to action, and this certainly was the case for the first comprehensive coal mining safety act. In September 1869, an uncontrollable fire trapped miners in the Steuben Shaft at Pennsylvania’s Avondale Colliery.

Without proper ventilation or any means of escape, 110 men died from smoke inhalation or asphyxiation. Pennsylvania’s governor denounced the sacrifice of so many lives “upon the alter of human cupidity,” inspiring passage of the safety act without a single dissenting vote.

But following this initial response, Pennsylvania’s mine inspectors suffered from inadequate funding, hostile and uncooperative mine operators, and a public that seemed more concerned with the benefits of cheap coal than the high toll placed on the workers.

Subsequent disasters in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and other coal-mining states over the next century and a half spurred similar spikes of demonstrative sympathy sandwiched between periods of public indifference. Mine inspection and regulation migrated from state to federal authorities over time, but the policies suffered from the same combination of hostility and lethargy.

I don’t mean to understate the strides made by today’s coal industry in protecting its workers. The conditions in today’s coal mines are exponentially better than those of the 19th century. But modern coal mining brings a host of modern dangers. Deadly gases, like the methane that caused Monday’s disaster, will always haunt the mines.

How safe can we make coal mining in the United States? Will the tragedy in Raleigh County spur more than a fleeting sympathy from Americans outside of coal mining regions?

The long historical record, as well as the current disaster in my home state of West Virginia, suggests that we need to make a more concerted effort to resolve these problems. Material conditions in America’s coal industry have improved; the bad habits of sharp indignation at coal mining tragedies followed by public indifference have not.

Eliminating risk in the mining industry will cost a lot, as some of the same industry representatives who tout “zero fatalities” hasten to point out whenever talk of tighter federal regulation begins to gain ground.

And even then it will probably prove impossible. Certainly no coal-mining nation can presently boast such a record. If the dangers of coal mining promise to endure, however, this hardly lets Massey Energy off the hook for the Upper Big Branch tragedy.

A deep and abiding tension between productivity and safety has characterized the U. S. coal industry since its inception more than two centuries ago. There is clear evidence that Massey’s chief executive, Don Blankenship, pushed his managers and superintendents to deliver the best numbers possible — production numbers, first and foremost, and satisfactory safety statistics only secondarily.

When federal mine safety inspectors and attorneys have tried to stand in Massey’s way, the company has contested violation citations and fines. This is, of course, Massey’s right under the law. But when the courts delivered verdicts unfavorable to the company’s bottom line, Blankenship decided to take the fight to the electoral sphere.

In this regard, he has taken a page from the playbook of the 19th century’s most infamous coal barons. Indeed, the carbon kings of earlier times might even have blushed at Blankenship’s no-holds-barred approach when confronted by West Virginia judges and juries, federal regulators, union leaders and environmentalists.

We should be asking how Massey managed to keep the Upper Big Branch mine open despite the property’s unusually bad record of serious safety violations. If we value the conveniences of our consumer society, energy independence, and all of the other benefits that the nation’s coal miners jeopardize their lives every day to provide, though, we will not stop there.

The fuel unearthed from subterranean mines and scraped out of giant open pits such as those Massey operates elsewhere in Central Appalachia generates electricity for large stretches of the American Midwest, Upper South, and Mid-Atlantic.

Ultimately, the tragedy at Upper Big Branch should lead all Americans to ask tough questions, not the least of which is this: What role does our collective desire to secure the benefits of cheap and plentiful energy play in subjecting tens of thousands of miners every day to potential harm underground?