"High negligence and reckless disregard" is how the Mine Safety and Health News describes the decision to allow reporters and family members into the Crandall Canyon Mine last week during rescue attempts to reach six trapped miners.

"As someone who has covered the health and safety side of this industry for 18 years and gone to both surface and underground mines, I could not believe what I was seeing on CNN News and reading on MSHA's Web site," wrote Mine Safety and Health News managing editor and owner Ellen Smith in an editorial that will be published today.

Smith, whose bi-weekly newsletter covers the mining industry, is critical of both mine owner Bob Murray and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

"This isn't supposed to be a 'feel good' operation. It's a dangerous and unsafe mine rescue," wrote Smith, referring to explanations by Murray and Assistant Labor Secretary Richard Stickler. "Pictures are worth a thousand words," Stickler had told reporters at a news conference Thursday in explaining MSHA's decision to allow reporters and two family members into the mine.

Smith noted that she has defended the record of the Crandall Canyon Mine "from the first hour of this accident.... But I will not defend what I see as high negligence and reckless disregard on the part of MSHA and Mr. Murray for allowing these people into the mine during this very serious rescue operation when 'seismic activity' continues to occur and when no one knows why such a catastrophic failure occurred to begin with."

A Mine Safety and Health News reporter, Kathy Snyder, wrote on a mine safety watch blog, "Since mine rescue became a trained discipline in the early 20th century, I cannot recollect one other instance of untrained observers or anyone not necessary to the rescue effort being allowed underground during an active rescue attempt." Snyder is a former press officer for MSHA.

"Let's look at this in a different context," Smith wrote in her editorial. "We aren't even letting family members on 'stable' portions of the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed. We don't let people in damaged houses if there are aftershocks from earthquakes."

Smith has already sent a version of her editorial to the newsletter's subscribers and says that even though most of these subscribers are "hard-core mining people," she has received positive feedback. "Right on sister," wrote one.

"Even MSHA employees were telling me they can't believe it's happening," Smith said in a phone interview, about the family-and-media mine tours. "The whole situation is out of control."

Smith also criticized MSHA for allowing Murray to brief families about rescue developments. "It's a conflict of interest," she said, and the situation is "just too emotional. You need someone to step back. That's what MSHA can do" but isn't, she said. The federal MINER Act requires that MSHA be "the primary communicator with the operator, miners' families, the press and the public."

In her editorial, Smith also noted that there have been at least five mine collapses since 1990 that triggered seismic readings. At the Azko Salt Mine collapse in upstate New York, "we lost a salt mine the size of Manhattan."

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com