Government investigators have found that the Mine Safety and Health Administration failed to conduct required inspections last year at 107 of the nation?s 731 underground coal mines. In a report released Friday evening, the office of the Labor Department?s inspector general also found ?significant inspection and supervisory deficiencies? in the agency?s inspections of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, where six miners and three rescuers died in August. The inspector general?s report also concluded that the agency had misstated the number of inspections it had conducted, apparently to inflate its rate of completed inspections.
See "Report Cites Mine-Safety Agency Failures", Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, November 18, 2007