View Full Version : Blast traps miners in West Virginia
TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - An underground explosion at an Upshur County coal mine trapped 13 miners, a county emergency official said Monday.
The explosion at the Seago Mine south of Buckhannon happened about 8 a.m., said Steve Milligan, deputy director of the county’s Office of Emergency Management. Six miners made it out of the mine and refused treatment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10682163/
Only one survivor I hear.
RIP.
Only 1 survivor rescued from W. Va. coal mine
Miner in critical condition; families anguished after early report 12 survived
TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - In a stunning and heartbreaking reversal, mining officials told family members early Wednesday that 11 of the 12 trapped coal miners initially thought to have survived a mine explosion had died.
The devastating news came more than three hours after Gov. Joe Manchin announced he had been told 12 of the miners survived the disaster. Rescue crews found the first victim earlier Tuesday evening.
“About the confusion, I can’t tell you of anything more heart-wrenching than I’ve ever gone through in my life. Nothing,” Manchin said.
“I’m outraged,” he later told NBC’s “Today” show, adding that the state would investigate the cause of the explosion, the miscommunication and the mine’s numerous safety and health violations last year. “We’re going to look into this,” Manchin vowed.
John Bennett, whose father Jim Bennett was one of the victims and had been due to retire in April, complained that his father would “tell me how unsafe the mine is.”
Problems at the mine had been “going on for months ... and they still send men in,” Bennett told “Today,” adding that he felt that if the mine owner had allowed workers to unionize the violations wouldn’t have happened.
Survivor in critical condition
The sole survivor of the disaster, identified by mining officials as 26-year-old Randal McCloy, was hospitalized in critical condition early Wednesday, a doctor said. When he arrived, he was unconscious but moaning, the hospital said.
“It’s sorrow beyond belief,” Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer of mine operator International Coal Group, said during a news conference.
Thirteen miners had been trapped 260 feet below the surface of the Sago Mine since an explosion early Monday. The mine is located about 100 miles northeast of Charleston. As rescue workers tried to get to the men, families waited at the Sago Baptist Church during an emotional two-day vigil.
But late Tuesday night, families began streaming out of the church, yelling “They’re alive!” The church’s bells began ringing and families embraced, as politicians proclaimed word of the apparent rescue a miracle.
As an ambulance drove away from the mine carrying what families believed was the first survivor, they applauded, not yet knowing there were no others.
Though the governor announced that there were 12 survivors, he later indicated he was uncertain about the news. As word buzzed through the church of survivors, he tried to find out what was going on, he said.
“All of a sudden we heard the families in a euphoric state, and all the shouting and screaming and joyfulness, and I asked my detachments, I said, ‘Do you know what’s happening?’ Because we were wired in and we didn’t know,” Manchin said.
'Miscommunication'
Hatfield blamed the wrong information on a “miscommunication.” The news spread after people overheard cell phone calls, he said. In reality, rescuers had only confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs.
But what leaked out to anxious family members was that 12 were found alive. At least two family members in the church said they received cell phone calls from a mine foreman.
“That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center,” Hatfield said.
Three hours later, Hatfield told the families that “there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived,” said John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners.
“There was no apology. There was no nothing. It was immediately out the door,” said Nick Helms, son of miner Terry Helms.
Chaos broke out in the church and a fight started. About a dozen state troopers and a SWAT team were positioned along the road near the church because police were concerned about violence. A Red Cross volunteer, Tamila Swiger, told CNN people were breaking down and suffering panic attacks.
Company officials waited to correct the information until they knew more about the rescue, Hatfield said.
“Let’s put this in perspective. Who do I tell not to celebrate? I didn’t know if there were 12 or 1 (who were alive),” Hatfield said.
Anne Meredith, whose father died in the incident, said: “I feel that we were lied to all along,” adding that she planned to sue ICG.
Virginia Dean, whose uncle was another victim, reacted by saying, “Only one lived. They lied.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10682163/
Notes assured families miners died peacefully
'Your dad didn't suffer,' wrote victims while trapped underground
TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Some of the 12 coal miners who died following an explosion left notes behind assuring family members that their final hours trapped underground were not spent in agony, a relative said Thursday.
“The notes said they weren’t suffering, they were just going to sleep,” said Peggy Cohen, who had been called to a makeshift morgue at a school to identify the body of her father, 59-year-old mining machine operator Fred Ware Jr.
Cohen said a note was not left with Ware’s body, but that she planned to retrieve his personal belongings later Thursday to see if he left one in his lunch box. But she said the medical examiner told her notes left with several of the bodies all carried a similar message: “Your dad didn’t suffer.”
Ware was among a dozen miners who were found after 41 hours inside the mine. They were found at the deepest point of the Sago Mine, about 2˝ miles from the entrance, behind a fibrous plastic cloth stretched across an area about 20 feet wide to keep out deadly carbon monoxide gas.
The sole survivor, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, remained in critical condition in a coma in a Morgantown hospital Thursday with a collapsed lung, dehydration and other problems.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin said autopsies on the dead should be completed either late Thursday or early Friday, and his office indicated that if the families want him there, he would attend all the funerals.
Families of the victims are considering legal action, said Amber Helms, whose father, fire boss Terry Helms, was among those killed.
“It’s the biggest thing that’s going to happen after these miners are put to rest,” she said Thursday on NBC’s “Today.”
In other developments, federal and state investigators were at the mine Thursday seeking a cause for Monday’s explosion. Coal mine explosions are typically caused by buildups of naturally occurring methane gas or highly combustible coal dust in the air, but what exactly triggered that explosion remained unclear.
The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported Thursday that a federal contractor that monitors thunderstorms detected three lightning strikes within five miles of the Sago mine within a half hour of Monday’s explosions. The contractor, Vaisala Inc., said two of the strikes, including one that was four to 10 times stronger than average, hit within 1˝ miles of the mine.
David Dye, who heads the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said that in addition to the cause, investigation will also probe “how emergency information was relayed about the trapped miners’ conditions.”
Just before midnight Tuesday, families received word that 12 miners were alive. Bells at the church pealed and politicians proclaimed the rescue a miracle before the truth emerged three hours later. At that point, the families’ joy turned instantly to fury, with one man lunging at coal company officials.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Fallen miners were not far from safety
Healthier air was less than 2,000 feet away, mine executive says
TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Eleven miners who died in the Sago disaster could have walked out alive had they known that there was healthier air less than 2,000 feet away, the head of the mining company told NBC News in an interview aired on Monday — exactly a week to the day that the men sat trapped in the mine awaiting rescuers who arrived too late for all but one survivor.
“They were headed into an unknown,” International Coal Group CEO Ben Hatfield said. “They had no way of knowing how big, how disastrous the explosion was. In hindsight, if they had known that the smoke was only extremely dense in an area of perhaps 1,000 or 1,500 feet, yes they could have moved to fresh air, yes they could have survived, but they had no way of knowing that.”
“It’s over two miles to the outside and they no doubt would have been concerned that they can’t walk through two miles of smoke,” he added. “If they had known that it was only 1,500 or 2,000 feet of smoke certainly they could have come on out and yes they could have been saved.”
Hatfield called it a tragedy that was “unavoidable and horribly sad” because the miners, even though they had breathing devices, did exactly what they had been taught to do: hunker down and wait for rescuers.
Crews did not know the location of the miners while they awaited rescue and had no way to communicate with them.
The men appeared to have died after about 10 hours and the rescuers only arrived after about 40 hours. Eleven men died awaiting rescue, one died in the blast that caused the disaster and a 13th survived.
Gases being vented
The interview was aired as the work of uncovering why the miners died resumes in earnest Monday. Federal investigators were at the Sago Mine over the weekend, but no one will be allowed into the mine until carbon monoxide and other deadly gases are vented.
International Coal Group said in a statement that the mine’s fan was working and circulating air through the mine. A pair of ventilation holes have been completed, and the company was working on a pilot hole for a planned vent in the area of the mine where the explosion apparently occurred.
At a news conference Monday, Gov. Joe Manchin named J. Davitt McAteer, who oversaw the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration during the Clinton administration, to head a special investigation for his office and prepare recommendations on improving rescue, communications and safety.
“My goal is to make West Virginia the safest mining state in the county,” Manchin said.
Also Monday, West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd said officials from the federal MSHA would be called before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing before the end of the month to testify about its response to the disaster. Manchin said the federal agency would also take part in public hearings in West Virginia.
Three funerals on Monday
Like most of those held Sunday, Monday’s memorials were to be private gatherings, with the media asked not to intrude after the heartbreak of the miners’ deaths played out last week on live television.
The Groves family invited The Associated Press inside miner Jerry Groves' memorial service, because his family wanted the whole world to “see our tears and our smiles,” said Mike Rose, Groves’ son-in-law.
“I know I’ll see him again,” Debbie Groves said, surrounded by friends and family at the Cleveland Independent Baptist Church for his funeral. “Eternity is forever. Our time here is just a vapor.”
ICG said in a statement that it is paying for all of the miners’ funeral expenses, but that Hatfield is not attending the services to avoid creating additional stress on the families.
“We’ve got people all over the world praying for us, and that’s how I’m getting by,” he said, sparking a chorus of “Amens” from the crowd, which listened to stories about the 56-year-old who spent half his life working in the coal mines.
Groves’ niece, Teresa Cogar, said her Uncle Jerry was “always sitting on his porch in his flip-flops, drinking an iced tea.”
A survivor clings to life
The surviving miner, 26-year-old Randal McCloy Jr., remained hospitalized in Morgantown. He had been in a medically induced coma to allow his brain time to heal, and while hospital officials said in a statement Sunday that his sedation had been stopped, they said it would take awhile for the medication to clear his system.
Then testing can begin to determine the extent of the damage McCloy suffered in the mine.
Dr. Larry Roberts, the head of McCloy’s treatment team at West Virginia University’s Ruby Memorial Hospital, said McCloy had shown signs of improvement since Saturday but remained in critical condition.
McCloy’s wife, Anna, asked that attention focus on those whose lives were to be remembered.
“We are thinking of them today and throughout this difficult time and we ask you to please keep all the families in your thoughts and prayers,” she said.
Near the end of Groves’ service, Rose asked all the coal miners in the crowd to stand and be recognized. To the 10 who stood, Rose said, “You are the backbone of this state and this country. Always hold your head high and tell everyone you’re a coal miner.”
He then ended the service with the same words Jerry always used to bid his family farewell.
“I’ll see you in a little bit.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10774085/
Doctor: Sole mine survivor out of coma
Extent of damage to Randal McCloy’s brain still unknown
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The sole survivor of a mine explosion that killed 12 fellow miners emerged from a light coma Wednesday but still cannot speak, his doctor said.
Randal McCloy Jr., who had been in a coma since his Jan. 4 rescue, is able to respond to simple commands and follow movements with his eyes, said Dr. Larry Roberts at Ruby Memorial Hospital. He also is able to chew and swallow soft foods.
McCloy, 26, of Simpson, may have suffered brain damage from the carbon monoxide exposure in the mine, but the extent of any damage is not yet known. He has developed a slight fever but remains in fair condition.
Roberts said McCloy continues to show slight neurological improvement each day.
“The family obviously is thrilled with Randy’s constant progress,” said Aly Goodwin Gregg, the family’s spokeswoman. “They remain optimistic about his continued recovery and they recognize how long the recovery process is going to take.”
Gregg said McCloy’s wife has remained at his side and his children visit him regularly. They talk to him and he responds to them.
Lara Ramsburg, spokesman for Gov. Joe Manchin, said McCloy “continues to be a miracle and the governor is extremely pleased with his progress.”
McCloy survived the Jan. 2 blast at the Sago Mine and more than 41 hours of exposure to deadly carbon monoxide. For days, he had hovered near consciousness, but doctors would not classify him as out of the coma until he was fully awake.
The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Sago mine survivor stands, puckers for a kiss
Doctors see improvements, but extent of brain damage still unclear
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - With a little help, the sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster stood for the first time since the accident, and puckered his lips when his wife asked for a kiss, doctors said Friday.
Randal McCloy Jr., 26, came out of a coma earlier this week.
“In this business of taking care of severe head injuries, little things make us happy,” Dr. Julian Bailes said.
McCloy can make noises when doctors cover his breathing tube. Whether he will be able to speak when the tube is removed depends on the extent of the brain damage he suffered from carbon monoxide during his 41 hours trapped underground, Bailes said.
Twelve fellow miners died after the explosion Jan. 2.
Doctors described McCloy as being within “moments if not hours from death” when he arrived at West Virginia University’s Ruby Memorial Hospital on Jan. 4.
Transfered to rehabilitation center
On Thursday, he was transferred to a rehabilitation center. He stood for the first time that day with help from medical aides, and later puckered his lips when his wife, Anna, asked for a kiss, said Dr. Russell Biundo, medical director at HealthSouth Mountain View hospital in Morgantown.
“There is definitely a better connection with her than anybody else,” Biundo said. “What we all want is a connection so that when I say, ‘Lift one finger,’ he does it. Boom, then we have a party.”
Also on Friday, lawyers for the McCloys sued The National Enquirer and the supermarket tabloid’s parent, America Media Inc., to block them from republishing a photograph of the injured miner in his hospital bed.
The complaint contends the tabloid paid Randal McCloy’s brother, Matthew, $800 to take the photo, and claims it was an invasion of privacy because the miner was in a coma and could not consent, The Exponent Telegram of Clarksburg reported.
The suit seeks at least $75,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
The tabloid has no plans to republish the photo, its lawyer, Jay S. Bowen, said in a letter.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11071866/from/RS.1/
W.Va. mine owner: Lightning caused explosion
Sago disaster most likely caused by strike igniting methane gas, exec says
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - An explosion that killed 12 workers at the Sago Mine likely was caused by a massive lightning strike that ignited methane gas in a sealed-off area, the mine’s owner said Tuesday.
The company’s own investigation turned up three pieces of compelling evidence of a lightning strike, all from 6:26 a.m. on Jan. 2, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer of International Coal Group Inc.
He said weather monitors confirmed an unusually large and powerful lightning strike near the mine; the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed a seismic event at Sago; and the mine’s own atmospheric monitoring system signaled a combustion alarm.
The precise route the electrical charge followed remains under investigation, but Hatfield said there is no evidence that a nearby gas well contributed to the explosion.
Hatfield broke the news to miners’ families in a series of private meetings Tuesday, and Sago workers were to be briefed Tuesday night as they returned to work. The coal mine is set to resume production Wednesday.
‘Highly unusual accident’
“While our independent investigation is certainly not the final word on the explosion, we are confident that the joint federal-state investigation will reach a similar conclusion,” Hatfield said. “We are pleased that we can get our Sago employees back to work with the knowledge that the explosion was an unpredictable and highly unusual accident.”
The explosion trapped a crew of 13 men more than 250 feet underground for more than 40 hours. By the time rescue teams reached them, all but one had perished, most slowly succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning. Survivor Randal L. McCloy Jr. is still recovering from severe brain damage and other injuries.
McCloy, who is undergoing speech, physical and occupational therapies daily, took his first trip home on Tuesday. Following the three-hour trip, McCloy returned to his rehabilitation hospital in Morgantown, according to NBC News.
Although the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration declared the mine safe to re-enter last week, Hatfield said he delayed resuming production until he could share the initial findings with the families.
Hatfield said reactions ranged from anger and frustration to relief. Mainly, though, families appreciated getting the information before it was released to the media or the general public, he said.
He said he promised the families that lessons will be learned from the disaster, and coal mines will be made safer.
Though MSHA cited the mine for 208 violations in the months before the accident, the company’s investigation showed that none of those violations was related to the blast, Hatfield said. Still, the company expects to be under the microscope.
“Frankly, we welcome that scrutiny,” he said. “We have worked hard to address all concerns and are confident that we will provide a safe working environment for our miners.”
NBC News contributed to this report.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11829859/
canoilers
03-15-2006, 10:36am
Thanks Andrew for the news. I hope things improve for their workers, hate to see people and families hurt because someone was trying to save a buck or whatever.
Sole Sago Mine survivor returns home
Randal McCloy plans to ‘hang around, hold kids’
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Sago Mine survivor Randal McCloy Jr., looking thin and stiff but walking on his own, offered his gratitude as he was released from a hospital Thursday after almost three months.
“I’d just like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers, and I think that’s it,” McCloy said softly, wearing a ball cap and a racing-team jacket at a morning news conference.
His wife, Anna, who stayed with him throughout his recovery, added her own thanks. “Today is another part of our miracle,” she said.
Doctors cannot explain why McCloy, who was trapped in the mine for more than 40 hours, survived while 12 other men died.
“There are 12 families who are in our thoughts and prayers today and every day. The families of Randy’s co-workers and friends are celebrating with us today just as we continue to mourn with them. Please keep all of us in your thoughts and prayers,” Anna McCloy said.
McCloy left the hospital after the brief statement and headed home, where he was greeted by more than a dozen relatives cheering and blowing car horns.
As he sat on the front porch, McCloy said he would “probably just hang around, hold kids and stuff” on his first day home.
‘Miracle Road’ outside home
The rural road where they live has been renamed “Miracle Road,” Gov. Joe Manchin announced at the news conference earlier at the hospital.
On Wednesday, McCloy said that when he thinks of the 12 friends who slowly succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning after the Jan. 2 explosion, he pictures them elsewhere.
“I try to leave out all the gory details and stuff like that, because I don’t like to look at them in that light and that way,” he told The Associated Press.
“I just like to picture them saved and in heaven, stuff like that,” he said. “That’s really the best way you can remember somebody.”
Minutes from death
Doctors say McCloy, 26, was perhaps minutes from death when he was pulled from the mine Jan. 4 with kidney, lung, liver and heart damage. He was in a coma for weeks, suffering from severe brain injuries.
On the eve of his departure, he sat on a hospital bed with his wife, Anna, choosing his words carefully.
Two of his co-workers’ daughters have come to visit, and McCloy said he hopes to meet with all 12 families in the coming weeks and months.
“It’s a delicate situation, and it should be handled delicately. It’s not something you definitely want to dive right in,” he said. “I am going to choose to be careful about what I say and how I word things for the families’ sake. I just feel I should show them great respect.”
Doctors have repeatedly called McCloy a miracle, unable to explain why only the youngest of the 13 miners survived.
He is a fitness buff who ate well, lifted weights and rode bicycles. He doesn’t smoke. But McCloy himself remains mystified.
“I have no explanation of how I escaped it and survived,” he said. “It’s just crazy how that ended up being like that.”
Some people speculated McCloy was deeper inside the mine, farther from the poisoned air. But he says he was “pretty much in the same area all the time.”
Nor does he believe a crushed lung helped limit the amount of carbon monoxide he inhaled. “In a way, if you’ve got a crushed lung, you’d be in pain,” he said. “You’d probably inhale more.”
What he does know is that his wife and two children have motivated him through painful and challenging therapy, and he is going home months earlier than doctors first predicted.
What gets him through? ‘It's love, really’
“What I believe is that the people who are there for you tend to create a world where you can get better,” McCloy said. “It’s love, really.”
McCloy is about 5-foot-10 and thin, down from 160 pounds to just 135. His throat still bears a deep purple mark from a long-since-removed feeding tube, but his voice is clear and soft.
He smiles often and seems frustrated only by his limitations, mainly a right arm that remains weak.
My hands, my grip, is not as good as I want it to be, but I’m going to try to exercise and stuff like that,” he said.
Anna is providing an incentive. She ordered a present for his 27th birthday on April 14: a red 2006 Mustang to replace the family’s Taurus. “I wanted to give him something to work for, to make him really want to push himself,” she said.
In the pool at HealthSouth Mountainview Regional Rehabilitation Hospital, he does. He tosses a beach ball with a therapist to work on agility and reflexes. He springs from a therapist’s cradling arms into an upright posture in one swift motion. He grips the stainless steel parallel bars underwater and pulls his legs to his waist.
When he gets home, he will continue to use weights to help speed his therapy. He also will return to the hospital three days a week, four hours a day, for a few more months.
Up from down under, for good
Someday, he will start to think about work again. He’s considering attending a vocational school, maybe to study electronics. He will not be going back underground.
“No, I done learned my lesson,” he said. “The hard way.”
In a few months, the McCloys will take their first family vacation, a trip to Disney World. For now, though, they’re looking forward to peace.
“It’ll be a vacation just getting home,” said Anna, who will fire up the oven for the first time in three months to make a big pan of lasagna. Soon, her husband will start working through the thousands of cards and letters he has received — enough to fill a spare bedroom at a relative’s house.
Until the last few days, his wife shielded him from news coverage of the accident. He does not quite know what to make of his newfound fame.
“A lot of people are writing, asking me to go hunting and stuff,” he said with a laugh. “It’s kind of amazing, that they want to see me that bad.”
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Sago Mine families, survivor sue companies
Lawsuits accuse operator, other firms of negligence in W.Va mine disaster
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The lone survivor of the Sago Mine disaster and the families of two victims filed lawsuits on Wednesday against mine owner International Coal Group and five other companies.
All three lawsuits accuse ICG and subsidiary Wolf Run Mining of negligence in the operation of the mine. The lawsuits allege that the companies' failure to provide safe working conditions led the the Jan. 2 explosion.
The lawsuits also accuse Burrell Mining Products Inc., Raleigh Mine and Industrial Supply Inc., GMS Mine Repair and CSE Corp. of negligence for failing to provide proper safety equipment.
Twelve men died in the blast and prolonged entrapment at the coal mine near Buckhannon, while survivor Randal McCloy Jr. was severely injured.
The lawsuits were filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court by McCloy and his wife, Anna; Judy Bennett, widow of miner Alva Martin Bennett; and Lily Bennett, widow of miner James Bennett.
Each lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. The lawsuits filed by the Bennett families also seek an injunction to force ICG and Wolf Run to implement the recommendations of an independent investigation commissioned by Gov. Joe Manchin.
Miners’ federal suit dismissed
A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit by coal miners demanding that the government do more to ensure miners have working oxygen supplies and know how to use them.
The lawsuit was filed in June after Congress overhauled mine safety rules in response to the Sago disaster.
The United Mine Workers of America had sought to force the Mine Safety and Health Administration to conduct periodic checks of oxygen units and conduct emergency training for all underground coal miners.
But U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said the lawsuit didn't meet the legal requirements to force a court order.
"The loss of lives, and the risks miners presently face, weigh heavily in public discourse and are taken seriously by this court," Bates wrote. "But the tragedy of those events, and the need for greater protection described by plaintiff, cannot substitute for the requirements of the law."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Report: Lightning likely caused Sago mine blast
Federal investigation finds three ‘root causes’ in ’06 explosion that killed 12
BUCKHANNON, W.Va. - A lightning bolt likely traveled down a pump cable inside a sealed section of the Sago Mine, where it touch off the methane blast blamed for the deaths of 12 miners last year, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday.
Lightning is one of three “root causes” the agency cites in its long-awaited investigation into the Jan. 2, 2006, explosion.
Lightning had been suspected from the start, but the report for the first time describes its likely conduit into the mine. Previous reports by the state and the mine’s owner, International Coal Group, Inc., mentioned lightning but not its route.
Contributing to the blast, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Associated Press, methane levels inside the sealed section of the mine were not monitored, and seals used to close off that inactive section from the mine’s working area were not strong enough to withstand the blast.
One man survived
The explosion trapped a team of miners deep inside. By the time searchers reached them about 40 hours later, only one man had survived in the carbon monoxide gas.
It was the highest-profile coal mining accident in recent U.S. history and led to sweeping changes in federal and state mine safety laws.
The company idled the mine in March because of high production costs and low coal prices.
Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard E. Stickler and lead investigator Richard Gates met Wednesday morning with the victims’ families and the sole survivor, Randal McCloy Jr., at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
MSHA’s report said officials considered other potential causes, but lightning “has been determined to be the most likely ignition source.”
“Although a roof fall cannot be definitely excluded as a potential ignition source, it is a highly unlikely ignition source,” the report said.
Although Sago was a nonunion mine, the United Mine Workers union participated in the state and federal investigations and issued its own report.
The union’s experts believe the spark that ignited the methane gas came from friction between the mine’s deteriorating rock roof and the metal support system used to hold it up.
The UMW had argued that, unlike other coal mine blasts linked to lightning, there was no metal conduit at Sago that could have carried the charge two miles into the mine to the point where the explosion took place.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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