A 100ft high artwork of a miner adorns a beach famously washed over each day with millions of coal particles which once supplied the former colliery. The giant bare-chested figure chiselling coal ...

He’s proud of being a coal miner. But he doesn’t want anyone else to face his fate – or the myriad other dangers miners confront on the job.

MCCOY — “Oh daddy, don’t go to the mines today,” the band sang Saturday at the 20th annual Coal Miner’s Heritage Day.

She said her son now works as a coal miner, despite the dangers he grew up hearing about. Advertisement “My husband had 30 years in the coal mines and my son has 12 years underground,” she said.

Deep cuts Miners have long faced grave health threats. Between 1900 and 1960, cave-ins, explosions, other disasters and mining accidents killed nearly 100,000 coal miners on the job.