Coal

I've really been enjoying this new show. It is from the producers of Deadliest Catch and I've got to say that if I had a choice of being on a crab boat or being in a coal mine as a camera crew, I'd take the crab boat.

I'm not claustrophobic but the mine just looks way more dangerous. Coal documents the start up Cobalt Coal Company in West Virginia as it starts from the basics and two new crews. Of course there's a day shift and a night shift. To pull a profit each day they need seven 20x20 cuts on each shift. They use a continuous miner to do this. A massive piece of equipment that has a ripper head that just tears into the coal and pulls it back behind it and onto a conveyor belt.

They work in a 44 inch tall area, so bend over and measure 44 inches out and try not to think of the thousands of tons of material above you.

There are two operators of the continuous miner, Andy Christian and Randy Remines. They both have done the job for years and while Christian is the better operator I tend to like Remines much better. He's an underdog guy, he's had three heart attacks and has been diagnosed with black lung disease. He's old enough that a lot of mines won't hire him anymore. In the first episode he had a note from his wife giving him encouragement on the bottom of his lunch box. It was actually pretty touching.

The first episodes focused on how the day shift was keeping the company afloat while the night shift was snake bitten and couldn't do anything right. They brought in a younger miner operator to compete with Remines and Remines came out on top. I was actually pretty happy about that because it seemed as if he were hanging on by a thread at that point.

While the company seems to be getting by on a shoestring budget they are showing progress now until last night when the continuous miner broke for good. They had to finance a new one at a cost of half a million dollars.

This has seemingly solved a lot of equipment problems and they should be able to pull a small profit each day now. It's a great show and one I'd recommend you check out and be thankful you aren't a coal miner.