W. Virginia Blast Leaves 13 Coal Miners Trapped

Rescue workers hampered by silence, debris and deadly gas struggled through the night Monday to reach 13 coal miners trapped almost 300 feet underground by a powerful explosion in a mine shaft.

Public safety officials said late Monday that they had heard nothing from any of the trapped miners after an early morning explosion caved in a section of the Sago Mine more than 260 feet below the surface.

The blast occurred amid raging thunderstorms, and the mine’s owners speculated that lightning might have been the cause. However, government officials said they were not certain of the explosion’s origin.

By nightfall, search teams had begun to move cautiously on foot down the darkened, sloping shaft to the spot where the miners were thought to have been caught by the cave-in. By 10 p.m. EST, rescuers had proceeded about 4,800 feet into the shaft, still more than 8,000 feet away from where the miners were believed to be trapped.

“We’ve got rescue teams underway, and we’re trying to get some holes drilled to get air samples,” said Terry Farley, an administrator with West Virginia’s Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training.

But there was only silence from underground. “So far, we’ve got no communication,” Farley said.

Two rescue teams were “leapfrogging,” alternating in the lead, as they made “good progress” deep into the shaft, according to Jim Spears, secretary of West Virginia’s Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. “We have a good idea where they are.”

But the rescue teams were slowed, officials said, by concerns about air quality and efforts to ensure they had adequate oxygen as they descended. The teams had to wait more than 12 hours until officials drilled holes in the area above the cave-in site to vent and test for carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless and toxic gas that may have built up inside the shaft after the explosion.

“The air is holding up,” said West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, indicating that the threat of fire inside the mine shaft was subsiding. He added that more drill rigs had been dispatched to the disaster site.

“You just have to hope that the explosions weren’t of the magnitude that was horrific from the beginning,” Manchin told CNN before meeting with relatives of the trapped miners. “There’s always that hope and chance that they were able to go to part of the mine that still had safe air.”

Rescue crews also were preparing to drill deeper borings to lower a listening device to scan for sounds of life. And federal mine safety officials rushed a rescue robot to the cave-in site, located in a hilly, rural area about 100 miles northeast of Charleston.

More than 250 relatives and friends of the missing miners gathered half a mile from the mine at the Sago Baptist Church, a white clapboard chapel up a steep, muddy road where tents were set up for a vigil that could last for days.

Deep into the night, stunned relatives shuttled between the church and a parking lot outside, huddled against the January chill in hunting jackets and sweaters, talking together in hushed knots or worrying alone.

Randy Toler stood by himself, his thoughts turned to his uncle, Martin, the missing foreman of the trapped crew. Toler, an X-ray technician, had once worked as a miner under his uncle’s watchful eye.

His family had been at the church most of the day “trying to comfort each other,” he said. “We’re just holding onto every shred of hope you can hold onto.”

Inside the small church were several hundred more residents going through the same anguish -- “praying, crying, eating, singing,” Toler said.

Red Cross volunteers brought in dozens of cots and blankets and neighbors streamed in with food trays and urns of coffee and hot chocolate.

But the generosity did little to ease the mounting dread that left haggard-faced men and women pacing inside the church.

“It’s everybody’s worst fear,” said Linda Feola, a Red Cross volunteer who lives five miles from the mine. “Most of these folks won’t go to bed. They’re going on adrenaline until they get word about their loved ones.”

Officials and relatives said the trapped men ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s. Although some had worked in the mines for as long as three decades, others had been at it for only a few years.

“We’re waiting for any inkling of hope for them to get out,” said Lila Muncy, who told CNN that her brother, Randall McCloy, 27, was one of the trapped miners.

McCloy had worked three years as a mine “bolter” -- paid to prop up mine shaft roof supports. Leery about the perils of his job, Muncy said, McCloy never left the house at the start of his shift each morning without telling his wife: “God bless you.”

“Everybody’s just distraught,” she said.

When the blast occurred, the men were carrying only their lunches, goggles and one-hour air canisters but no extended-use oxygen tanks.

“If the miners are barricaded, as we hope they are, they would prepare themselves for rescuing by rationing whatever they have with them,” said Gene Kitts, a senior vice president of the International Coal Group, the mine’s owner.

The trapped miners were among the first group of a day shift to enter the mine, which had been closed for the New Year’s holiday weekend. The mine had been inspected before the crew descended, said officials from International Coal, which acquired the mine in March.

Coal company Chairman Wilbur L. Ross Jr. told Bloomberg News Service that he blamed a lightning strike for the explosion. “It’s a horrible freak accident,” Ross said. “Apparently a lightning bolt struck the mine.”

But Roger L. Nicholson, the coal company’s general counsel, would not confirm the link at a news conference near the mine. State officials “don’t know if the two are related,” Farley said.

International Coal bought the mine from the Anker West Virginia Mining Co., which had been in bankruptcy. Nicholson said the turnover had been completed in November.

In recent years, the mine has been cited repeatedly for a variety of health and safety violations by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. In a recent 11-week review period that ran from October through December, the agency’s inspectors cited the mine for 46 alleged violations of mine health and safety rules and levied almost $3,000 in fines.

The most serious violations included problems with protections against roof cave-ins and the mine’s overall plans to safeguard against methane gas and dust buildup.

Coal mine explosions often are caused by buildups of methane gas, but it was uncertain whether methane was at fault in Monday’s explosion. Methane dangers grow during the winter, when a rise in barometric pressure increases the threat of a release of the odorless, highly flammable gas.

During 2005, the mine was cited for 181 federal violations totaling $24,155 in fines. At least 96 of those citations were described as “significant and substantial.” Those figures were up substantially from the previous year, when the mine was cited 68 times and fined $9,515. Injuries grew over that period from eight to 14, though no fatalities had been reported at the mine in the last decade.

West Virginia ended 2005 with three mining deaths, the lowest since 2000.

“We think we were operating a safe mine,” said Kitts, who added that he could not comment further on the firm’s safety record. But he and Nicholson cautioned about early reports that methane gas had been detected immediately after the blast.

“We do not have any indication it was a methane-related accident,” Nicholson said.

Reports varied about when the explosion occurred. Some officials placed the blast as early as 6:30 a.m. EST, but Upshur County emergency officials were not notified immediately. “We haven’t pinned down a time yet,” Farley said.

The explosion occurred as thunderstorms swept over Upshur County in central West Virginia and lightning strikes lighted the morning sky. According to coal company and state mining officials, an explosion shook a section of the sloping mine shaft almost 10,000 feet from the entrance.

The trapped miners were in the lead car of a line of track-mounted trams that had descended into the mine shaft. A second group of miners behind the first team was approaching in a similar personnel car when the blast occurred, Farley said. Uninjured, they managed to get to safety.

“We’re hearing that they felt and heard the explosion and at that point they retreated from the mine,” Farley said.

At least four of the miners apparently headed back to make an attempt to reach the trapped contingent, but they were driven back by a wall of debris and the danger of contaminated air. “They went as far as they thought was safe,” Nicholson said.

The trapped men were probably near the remote end of the mine shaft, around a left turn in the tunnel, Spears said. “That’s 12,000 to 13,000 feet into the shaft,” he said.

Upshur County emergency dispatchers were notified about 8 a.m. and three paramedic crews were on the scene quickly, said dispatcher Jewell Fisher. “All we knew was that there were miners trapped,” she said.

But the paramedics could only wait while state and private rescue teams began arriving from across West Virginia. Rescue efforts also stalled until adequate numbers of rescue crews arrived. Under federal and state law, rescue efforts could not proceed until a backup unit had arrived, company officials explained.

Some relatives of those trapped did not learn about the disaster until as late as 10 a.m. “I didn’t find it out until I saw it on the news,” Muncy said.

Federal mine safety officials sent their own rescue experts to the mine site to coordinate the search efforts.

The agency also dispatched a robot unit similar to a device used in July 2002 when nine miners from Somerset, Pa., were trapped in a flooded underground shaft.

In an agonizing drama that electrified the nation, those men held out for 77 hours until they were rescued.

The upbeat ending of the 2002 episode provided the few rays of hope that kept relatives of the West Virginia miners aching for a similar climax. “You’ve got to believe in miracles,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark S. Schweiker, who led the successful vigil in Somerset.

“What I want to hear,” said Loretta Ables, whose fiance, Fred Ware Jr., 59, is missing, “is that he is alive. But they can’t tell me that.”

Peterson reported from Tallmansville and Braun from Washington, D.C. Associated Press also contributed to this report.