The fines alone for violations that MSHA deemed led to the disaster come to $1.8 million. How does that compare with the costs of doing things right from the start? What are the cost benefits of viewing inspectors as friends, rather than foes?

But the second thing we have learned is that MSHA itself hasn't kept up with the times. Crandall Canyon's flawed plans for retreat mining were evaluated and approved the way plans have been evaluated for years, even though a sophisticated computer analysis at the administration's Pittsburgh office likely would have revealed problems.

Stickler is careful how he answers questions about this. "They had the expertise to evaluate this plan the way they've always evaluated plans," he said of his engineers in Denver. "It's easy after you have a failure to step back and say it wasn't adequate, and we should have done something different." But, to be sure, MSHA's policy now is to send all retreat-mining plans to Pittsburgh for review, and the agency is looking to hire more engineers to do that work. In four months, about 12 of 13 plans have been sent there, he said.

Lost in all the focus on Crandall Canyon is the fact mining is becoming safer. By MSHA's reckoning, fatality rates in three of the last four years have been the lowest in history.

That's small comfort to the families of the nine Crandall victims. As the lessons from a year ago pile up, we can only imagine how things would change if miners and inspectors worked together.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com