Safety Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Charleston Activists Call For Action On Gun Violence

The West Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action will host a Wear Orange event to honor the lives of those affected by gun violence and elevate gun violence prevention efforts nationwide.

The West Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action will host a Wear Orange event Friday June 2 from 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church to honor the lives of those affected by gun violence and elevate gun violence prevention efforts nationwide.

Diane Pendleton is event lead for the Charleston chapter of Moms Demand Action.

“Moms Demand Action is a part of an organization called Everytown for Gun Safety,” she said. “We are all walks of life. We’re a nonpartisan group. There’s 10 million supporters now and we work together for gun safety. We work together for gun violence prevention and for keeping our families safe.”

June 2 is National Gun Violence Awareness Day, and the event is part of Wear Orange Weekend. Wear Orange originated on June 2, 2015 — what would have been Hadiya Pendleton’s 18th birthday. It began with teenagers in Chicago, who wanted to honor their friend, Hadiya, after she was shot and killed on a playground at 15 years old.

“Her friends got together and came up with the idea of orange because it is the color to protect people from guns, for example, hunters,” Pendleton said. “Orange honors Hydeia Pendleton. There’s also 120 people shot every day in the United States, as well as hundreds more that are wounded.”

The event will feature speakers, food and activities for children.

“Community events bring the community together to raise awareness and elevate prevention and education. Specifically, we’re working together to keep the guns out of the wrong hands,” Pendleton said.

She said the organization is focused on keeping guns out of the places where they should not be, such as schools and other places where children are.

“We can also prevent the unintentional shootings where children gain access to the gun and just a horrific tragedy happens in the home,” Pendleton said. “And I’ll add to that two thirds of the gun deaths are from suicide, and we believe there are ways to prevent this.”

Pendleton said the event is a call to action for community members.

“Call your state senators to demand common sense gun safety laws,“ Pendleton said. “And examples of those are background checks on every sale, red flag laws, safe storage requirements, and now a ban on assault weapons.”

Capito Votes No On Rail Safety Bill Prompted By East Palestine Derailment

The Railway Safety Act passed the Commerce Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday on a bipartisan 16 to 11 vote.

The Railway Safety Act passed the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday on a bipartisan 16 to 11 vote. The February train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, prompted the legislation.

Among those voting no: West Virginia Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

In a statement, Capito said she agrees with parts of the bill, but voted against it “because of the long list of extraneous provisions in it that had nothing to do with the derailment in Ohio or with rail safety in general.”

“Provisions like a new grant program for commuter railroads that already received billions in the infrastructure law and COVID packages, and giving many new authorities to the Biden administration that will lead to more hazardous materials being transported by truck, which will only hurt our roads,” she continued.

The bill would improve technology that detects mechanical problems on trains, requires more information about hazardous materials shipments to be provided to first responders, increases civil penalties for safety violations and mandates at least two people on board every train.

It now goes to the full Senate.

Morgantown LGBTQ Community Fears For Safety After Club Q Shooting

The shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs this past weekend was an all too familiar story for many in the LGBTQ community, and one that highlights local safety concerns.

Rev. Zac Morton of the First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown said the news out of Colorado this weekend was devastating — and exhausting.

“It has a certain level of familiarity to it, that we’ve been, not only through mass shootings before, but experiencing the fact that it’s targeted at an LGBTQ group,” he said.

Morton, who counts many local LGBTQ community members as part of his congregation, sees the shooting, even two time zones away, as a harsh reminder that security is a constant concern.

“I worry that our local communities here, events from Pride, our local LGBTQ clubs and even our church could potentially be targeted,” Morton said. “Heaven forbid, in an act of gun violence, but there’s a lot of other ways in which we can be targeted, too.”

BD Voss is a master’s student in geology at West Virginia University and the social media manager for the LGBTQ+ club on campus. This year, they chose to carpool with relatives to a family Thanksgiving gathering in Virginia because traveling in the same area was already uncomfortable for them.

“Now with the surge of hate crimes, and as someone who is very visibly not gender conforming, it’s very scary to think of going and pumping gas by myself on the way to go visit relatives,” Voss said.

They said since the relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions, there has been a concerted effort on campus to build a community. There are talks to hold a vigil when students return to campus next week, but Voss acknowledges that things are going to be difficult moving forward.

“Treat your fellow students and fellow staff members and fellow faculty and people you interact with on a daily basis with compassion as much as you possibly can,” they said.

Brad Grimes is the program coordinator of the WVU LGBTQ+ Center. He said the security of staff and students has been a primary concern for his office for years, in no small part because of increased anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“If you think that like last year alone in 2021, there were over 300 anti-LGBTQ bills and pieces of legislation passed,” Grimes said. “Then you see a headline, like the recent one this past weekend, it’s beyond political attacks and generalized attacks. People are dying just for who they are.”

Rev. Jenny Williams is the faith organizer at the ACLU of West Virginia. She said no place is immune to this type of violence.

“It’s just yet another assault on the daily freedoms of people because of how they identify, who they love, trying to feel comfortable in their own skin,” she said.

Williams said a lot of work needs to be done, both in the short and long-term, to create infrastructure to keep LGBTQ people safe.

“In West Virginia, we’re tied for last in the country and acceptance of queer people,” she said. “There’s long term work that needs to be done in terms of legislation, in terms of changing the conversation and faith communities.“

The shooting occurred at midnight on Nov. 20, just as the National Transgender Day of Remembrance began. Morton said the day is meant to be about confronting and remembering the devaluation of human life through rhetoric and actions that left 36 trans people dead in 2021.

After Club Q, the number is now 38.

“Different groups of people are made to kind of live with this lingering anxiety and grief. They have to ask, ‘Am I in a safe space?’ We need to move towards a society where people have to do as little of that as possible. And that’s the only way it can get done is together.”

State Officials Recognize National School Bus Safety Week

This week is National School Bus Safety Week and the West Virginia Governor’s Highway Safety Program is reminding drivers and pedestrians about the state’s school bus laws.

The program is specifically focusing on the illegal passing of school buses while the stop-arm is extended, signaling that children are entering or exiting. Drivers should come to a complete stop until the arm is retracted and the bus begins to move.

The area where children are entering or leaving buses is called the “danger zone,” which can be 10 feet in front of the bus, 10 feet outside either side of the bus or anywhere behind the school bus.

Aimee Cantrell of the Highway Safety Program said it’s part of the program’s goal to reduce the number of incidents on West Virginia roadways.

“Not to be cliche, but school buses are transporting one of our most precious natural resources, right, our kids,” Cantrell said. “That’s why, as motorists, it’s our responsibility to just kind of keep an extra eye out, extra caution.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports 183 pedestrian deaths and 112 deaths of occupants in school-transportation-related crashes from 2011 to 2020, with 21 percent of school-age pedestrians killed in school-transportation-related crashes struck by vehicles moving straight.

However, school buses are statistically one of the safest vehicles on the road for children, accounting for less than one percent of all traffic fatalities.

Cantrell says recognizing school bus safety is also important for pedestrians.

“We would encourage any bus rider to arrive at the bus stop five minutes early, to take at least five giant steps away from the edge of the road and wait until the bus stops, the door opens and the driver says it’s okay before stepping onto the bus,” Cantrell said.

The annual observation coincides with a bus crash in Mingo County, when it collided with a truck on the King Coal Highway around 7 a.m. Tuesday morning. It hospitalized seven students and killed the truck driver.

More resources about school bus safety can be found at the NHTSA’s website.

Mine Safety Officials Won’t Do More To Protect Coal Miners From COVID-19, Letter Says

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is declining to issue an emergency temporary standard that could protect coal miners whose jobs make them vulnerable to the coronavirus.

That’s according to an Aug. 14 letter from Department of Labor Deputy Assistant Secretary Joe Wheeler to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. MSHA can issue emergency temporary standards only when it determines that miners are exposed to a grave danger. It has only issued a handful of such standards, MSHA said, typically in the aftermath of large-scale mining disasters.

In the letter, Wheeler writes, “At this time, MSHA has determined it lacks evidence that COVID-19 poses a grave risk specific to miners.”

MSHA does not keep a comprehensive list of coronavirus cases among coal miners, though it does track mines where cases have been reported. According to a spokesperson for the Department of Labor, MSHA is currently aware of 188 mines that have reported instances of COVID-19.

To bolster its point, MSHA said that states with the highest numbers of working coal miners, including West Virginia, have relatively low rates of COVID-19.

A government official with knowledge of coal mining, who asked to remain anonymous over concerns for their job, said comparing rates of disease in a state to the risk of contracting a disease in a mine is “not incredibly useful.” According to the official, it only takes one case to spark an outbreak in a confined working environment. “Just take the meat-packing industry, for example. The explosion of cases in those facilities occurred in states that had relatively few cases. But the nature of the work, close quarters, little ability to social distance and no PPE caused the virus to infect upwards of 40-60 percent of employees.”

West Virginia news outlet WBOY reported this month that a Murray Energy mine in Harrison County had four cases of the virus, qualifying it as an official outbreak, according to health department procedures.

“Miners are particularly vulnerable to respiratory illnesses,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has supported efforts to force MSHA to intervene. “The fact that the agency tasked with protecting them is saying that the risk miners face from COVID-19 is similar to or less than the general population is extremely concerning.”

MSHA said existing permanent standards are sufficient to protect miners’ health. But even before the arrival of coronavirus there were indications of serious shortcomings in health protections. Reporting from NPR and the Ohio Valley ReSource found epidemic-levels of black lung disease among working and retired coal miners, demonstrating that existing safety regulations and enforcement procedures still leave miners at risk of respiratory illness. Respiratory disease, in turn, can make people more vulnerable to serious effects from COVID-19 infection.

“Our miners work in close proximity to one another from the time they arrive at the mine site,” said Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America. “They get dressed, travel down the elevator together, ride in the same man trip, work in confined spaces, breathe the same air, operate the same equipment, and use the same shower facilities.”

The UMWA has worked with individual mines to implement uniform safety precautions, including additional disinfection between shifts and limiting the number of miners who enter the mines in confined “man trips.” The union also asked MSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard, even going so far as to file suit in a Washington D.C. circuit court asking a judge to force the agency to act. The judge dismissed that suit.

MSHA said it has implemented reporting procedures for miners who are concerned about COVID exposure in their workplaces. MSHA said it has received complaints through its tip line and, from March 1, 2020 to Aug. 14, 2020, has issued 122 citations for violations of various regulations regarding sanitary conditions that could contribute to the spread of COVID-19.

Mine Safety Officials Won’t Do More To Protect Coal Miners From COVID-19, Letter Says

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is declining to issue an emergency temporary standard that could protect coal miners whose jobs make them vulnerable to the coronavirus.

In the letter, Wheeler writes, “At this time, MSHA has determined it lacks evidence that COVID-19 poses a grave risk specific to miners.”

To bolster its point, MSHA said that states with the highest numbers of working coal miners, including West Virginia, have relatively low rates of COVID-19.