SAGO, W.Va. – Jubilation turned to anger early today when relatives of 12 coal miners believed alive in a West Virginia coal mine blast were told that 11 of their loved ones were dead.
One survivor was in critical condition at an area hospital.
People were storming out of Sago Baptist Church, where relatives had kept vigil. Mayhem had erupted as at least one fight broke out, and calls for paramedics were heard.
HARAZ N. GHANBARI / Associated Press
Families of the miners who were trapped for more than 40 hours in the Sago Mine in West Virginia were told late last night that 12 of the 13 had died in the mine. The disclosure came hours after the families were told that 12 of the 13 had survived.
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Three hours before, their mournful vigil had ended when they were told that 12 miners had been found alive. Church bells pealed and family members had broken out into hymns.
Families learned of the deaths from mine officials, who told reporters later that Randal McCloy was the only survivor of the accident, and was in critical condition.
International Coal Group Chief Executive Officer Ben Hatfield told the families gathered at the church that "there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived," John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners, told The Associated Press.
At that point, chaos broke out in the church.
Hatfield said the erroneous information spread rapidly when people overheard cell phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command center. In reality, rescuers had confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs, he said.
"The initial report from the rescue team to the command center indicated multiple survivors," Hatfield said during a news conference. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center. It quickly got out of control."
MARK WILSON / Getty Images
People stood near the entrance to Sago Baptist Church, where family members waited for word last night on the fate of coal miners who were trapped in the Sago Mine.
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Hatfield said the company waited to correct the information until it knew more about the rescue.
Much of the technology that searchers hoped would lead them to the miners – who had had no contact with the surface since early Monday – was put aside in favor of rescuers who were perhaps only 1,000 to 2,000 feet from the remaining 12 men.
It was not distance but the fear of a deadly subterranean fog of carbon monoxide that had kept rescuers from reaching the men.
Earlier, Hatfield reported on the discovery of one dead miner.
"It's a nightmare. It's the worst news we could possibly deliver to these families who are waiting for good news," Hatfield said.
Red Cross volunteer Tamila Swiger, who was at the church, said family members were "passing out and crying and just really in bad shape" after hearing about the unidentified body from Manchin.
Search crews yesterday had been advancing more quickly than they had in the earliest hours of the rescue operation, outpacing a robot sent in before them. The robot later was abandoned after it bogged down in mud.
The pace of the advancing crews had prompted a halt to shafts being drilled from the surface in hopes that they could provide access for cameras and for tests of the air in the mine.
JEFF SWENSEN / Getty Images
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin spoke to reporters yesterday about the miners trapped in the Sago Mine before it was incorrectly reported 12 of the 13 had survived.
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The first shaft, completed early yesterday, found noxious fumes that would not sustain life. Two more shafts were stopped within 20 feet of a cavern because rescue crews would have been forced to evacuate when the cavern was punctured.
Mine officials said the explosion trapped the miners about 260 feet below the surface and about 13,000 feet – more than 2 miles – from the entrance of a drift mine that bores horizontally into a hillside.
Not far from the mine's entrance, as many as 200 people had kept vigil in the Baptist church, hoping for word on loved ones.
Anna McCloy, 25, stood in the rain earlier yesterday and said she and her husband, Randal, had talked repeatedly about him leaving the mines.
Randal McCloy is a certified electrician, but the lure of money to be made in the mines was too much for the young family to pass up, his wife said. She said they decided that for her to stay home and care for their two young children, mining was the only area job that paid well enough.
"We were just talking about how we'd like to get away from it, to stop mining and maybe try something else," she said.
Coal mining offers some of the most financially attractive jobs in West Virginia, a state with the lowest household income in the nation and the second-highest poverty rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Demand for miners is increasing, with companies raising wages and offering bonuses to attract a new generation of miners, said Cal Kent, vice president for business and economic research at Marshall University in Huntington.
"These are not the old pick-and-shovel guys. This is a highly skilled work force," Kent said. "Annual incomes of $50,000 to $60,000 are not unusual . . . and this is a state where the average household income is $34,000 to $36,000.
"It's dirty work, it's hard work, but it pays pretty well."
The region around the Sago Mine in northeastern West Virginia is among the state's most impoverished areas. Many young people are leaving for better jobs, contributing to West Virginia having the highest median age in the nation, 39.
Kent said the average age of miners is "well above 45" and that the combination of a strong national appetite for coal and an anticipated bulge in retirements will fuel the demand for more miners.
Among the trapped miners was Jerry Helms, the fire boss responsible for ensuring there was no poisonous gas in the mine. His children said their father, who worked in the mines for 30 years, sacrificed everything to make sure his family had food and a home.
"He never wanted to work in a coal mine. His reason for working in coal mines is what I would wear, what I would eat. He helped me pay my bills. He would put his life up so I could go see a movie," said his son, Nick Helms, 25, who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Like the relatives of others trapped below, Nick Helms said the miners never let on how hard their work was.
"He told me bluntly that I would never step in the coal mine like he would, that I would never break my back like he did."
The cause of the blast remained a mystery. Company officials said that the mine did not have a history of methane gas problems and that air testing conducted before the explosion found no evidence of methane, a highly combustible gas.
The apparent lack of methane led some mining experts to speculate that coal dust, which is highly combustible, caused the explosion. A spark from electrical equipment could ignite coal dust, they said.
Hatfield said the likelihood of a coal dust explosion seemed low because no work had been done in the mine over the weekend. The trapped team was the first to enter the mine after the holiday layoff but had not begun work when the explosion occurred, he said. As a result, there would have been little or no coal dust in the air, he said.
Lightning was another possible cause. The explosion happened during a violent thunderstorm, and O'Dell said there had been incidents in which metal pipes extruding from underground mines had conducted lightning bolts. The bolts then ignited pockets of methane gas, he said.
The New York Times News Service and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
