furth furthermore, it's difficult and almost unimageable. it later enhanced the magnitude of this disaster. creating a new category of flagrant violations never imposed against massey. technical support audits that outlined concerns with methane in the mine were never transmitted to the mine operator. sadly, the list of enforcement lapses could go on as well. niosh states it could have possibly prevented the ubb explosion. there may be a number of reasons for these errors. some enforcement errors have plagued the agency for years and deadly mistakes are followed with a pledge to do better. upper big branch happened. tragedy strikes and enforcement regime goes on. administrator main, i hope you convince this committee and the nation's miners that this time it will be different, that this time we will learn from past mistakes and keep our promise to do better. i look forward to do this with our witnesses and i now recognize miss woolsey for her opening remarks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. certainly as we examine the lessons from the upper big

they're coping with almost unimage nabl disaster. 39 people across 5 states just from friday's stormshe storms before that. kentucky's governor is asking for disaster assistance. asking the federal government for help. small town of west liberty was all but leveled. cnn's rob marciano is live in kentucky. last hour when we joined you you were covered in snow which i found alarming, the fact that we were going to kentucky but it really does sort of speak to the bizarre fronts that are going through there. >> yeah. and just how uncredibly intense the two air masses were that spawned this massive tornado outbreak on friday with the numbers climbing there as far as how many confirmed tornadoes on the ground. regardless, this is shaping out to be the worst march tornado outbreak since at least 1994. and on the back side of this now we've got snow that's coming in. three or four inches on the ground. it's beginning to ease up enough. but the damage is done here. obviously going to hamper recovery efforts. we're standing just above the main street over the parking lot of 100-year-old bank. t