Mountain State Spotlight

Last year, private company Majestic Care bought four state-owned nursing homes, which for decades had been run by the state. Some families and workers

In 2014, then-Senate President Jeff Kessler proposed an ambitious plan: Set aside some of the tax money from gas, oil, and coal, so the state would continue to reap the benefits long after the last stream of gas was sucked out of the state’s wells and the last cart of coal was hauled out of the mines.

The Democrat from Marshall County said the idea, called the Wes...

Workers at an Institute chemical plant weren’t required to wear respirators or carry gas monitors that could have warned them about toxic fumes before a leak killed two employees and injured more than a dozen others earlier this year, according to federal investigators.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

West Virginia is one of the deadliest states for house fires, killing an average of 32 people per year between 2009 and 2023.

An audit of the State Fire Commission in December of 2025 noted that the commission hadn’t compiled a...

Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn’t need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs, all for former patients at her pulmonary rehabilitation clinic in Norton, Virginia.

“Each one of these represents a life that’s gone because of black lung,” Freeman explained ...