Watching Nightline on the west coast:

Wow, talk about compressing emotion.

We hadn't followed the West Virginia coal mine incident at all, but it was the topic on Nightline Tuesday so we watched the program.

Nightline gave a report in the order of events: First the mining accident and the great concern about those imperiled. At this point one miner was reported dead, but nobody knew about the remaining twelve. This was accompanied by interviews with some of the families involved, including a young man whose father was trapped below. The young man was saying, almost with a smile, that his dad told him never to go work in a mine. His attitude was remarkably sanguine, considering the circumstances. The Nightline reporter on the spot, John Donvan, told him so, and the young man said, "wait until you see me hours from now" - clearly indicating he was keeping a lot of emotion under wraps. Then the joyful news that the twelve were all alive. But that segment closed on a sober note when viewers learned that the one miner who had died, was the father of the young man we'd seen earlier.

Then there was a short segment on the Abramoff story.

Nightline returned to West Virginia and Donvan interviewed Ann and Dan Meridith, children of one of the twelve that were alive. (Their dad, by the way, was 61 years old and had been a miner for over 30 years.) They recounted how they learned of the good news - in a church, amidst much confusion. Then it was time for a commercial break.

After the break, and in an update for viewers on the west coast, came the incredible news that the reports from the scene were that all miners, the first one and the remaining twelve, were dead. John Donvan, the Nightline reporter on the scene, was clearly shaken. And so must have been a lot of viewers on the west coast who saw the story turn from disaster to hope to sadness for the young man to rejoycing over the news eveyone else was saved to learning that everybody was dead. One cannot but help think of the young man and Ann and Dan Meridith, all who were interviewed while they held out hope or believed the worst was over.

It was a powerful story, partly because the story was so compressed (within the 22 minutes of a Nightline, even less when you take out the 6 minute Abramoff segment). And partly because of the last-5-minutes, live, tacked on ending, breaking the trajectory of the "east coast" put-to-bed positive report, and ending with a jolt to the reporters and the viewers.

An amazing, but sad, event to watch.

UPDATE: There may be one survivor (of the twelve). It's all very confusing at the moment.


posted by Quiddity at 1/04/2006 12:35:00 AM