Blast trapped 65 Mexican miners

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Rescuers race to reach trapped Mexican miners
Pre-dawn blast occurred near U.S. border; toxic gases slow search for 65
SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico - Rescue workers were burrowing through debris clogging a Mexican coal mine early Monday in a desperate effort to reach some 65 miners who were trapped for more than a day by a gas explosion.

The miners were carrying only six hours of oxygen with them when the explosion occurred early Sunday, and officials said it was unclear if they had access to fresh air. Rescue teams had failed to make any contact with the trapped miners.

Several other workers who were near the mine’s entrance at the time of the explosion were able to escape alive and were treated for broken bones and burns.

Rescue teams worked round-the-clock as family members waited for news, huddled near bonfires and wrapped in blankets to protect against the bitter cold outside the mine near the town of San Juan de Sabinas, 85 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas.

Officials had promised a pre-dawn briefing, but they had yet to appear and were not letting anyone in the security zone.

Sergio Robles, director of Coahuila state’s emergency services, said the miners were carrying six hours of oxygen with them and were located between one and three miles from the mine’s entrance.

He said rescue officials had advanced up to 300 yards into the mine after working for nearly 20 hours. The explosion occurred around 2:30 a.m. Sunday. It was unclear when they would reach the miners.

Toxic gases slow search
Rescue efforts were slowed by the presence of toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, Robles said. When asked if officials believed the miners survived the explosion, Robles said: “It would be difficult because of the presence of gas. But we are holding out hope of finding someone alive.”

Juan Rebolledo, vice president of international affairs for mining giant Grupo Mexico, which owns the mine, said oxygen tanks were scattered throughout the site, but it was impossible to know if the trapped miners had access to any of them.

Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira Valdes, who was at the site overseeing the rescue operation, told Televisa network that the mine’s ventilation system was still working.

Rebolledo said several rescue teams were taking turns carefully removing debris that had clogged the steep shaft.

“It’s slow work because of the quantity of debris,” he said.

Worried family members waited for any information about their loved ones.

“We have hope that they are alive because they tell us that they have fans working” to ventilate the mine, said Olivia Camarillo, 50, whose 27-year-old son was trapped.

Norma Vitela heard about the explosion on the radio and came to find out what happened to her husband, 47-year-old Jose Angel Guzman. A father of four, Guzman had worked in the mine for 16 years, earning about $75 a week.

“Now we are waiting for a miracle from God,” she said.

Vitela said her husband had mentioned before that there were problems with gas in the mine, but he couldn’t afford to quit.

Union calls for investigation
Consuelo Aguilar, a spokeswoman for the National Miners’ Union, said there had been concern over safety conditions in Grupo Mexico mines. “We have pressured for better safety conditions as well as for better pay at the mines,” she said.

She called for an investigation to determine the exact cause of the accident and the responsibility of any company officials.

Rebolledo said safety conditions at the mine met Mexican government requirements as well as international standards. “We follow all the best safety procedures, but accidents can always happen,” he said.

The company discusses safety conditions with the union in annual meetings and there has been no major disagreement on the issue, he said.

Pedro Camarillo, a federal labor official who was not related to Olivia Camarillo, told reporters during a news conference at the site that officials found nothing unusual during a routine evaluation on Feb. 7.

As well as mining coal, Grupo Mexico is the world’s third-largest copper producer, with operations in Mexico, Peru and the United States.

History of accidents
There have been various fatal mining accidents in Coahuila. The worst was in 1969 when more than 153 miners were killed in a pit at the village of Barroteran. In 2001, another 12 people died in an accident at a mine near Barroteran.

Last month, 14 miners died in two separate accidents at mines in West Virginia, in the United States. Two men died in a fire Jan. 21 at a mine in Melville, nearly three weeks after 12 men died after an explosion near Tallmansville.

U.S. rules require miners to carry oxygen tanks that provide only about an hour’s worth of air. There is evidence that some of the miners killed in the Jan. 2 Sago mine accident used their oxygen devices, yet it took rescuers more than 40 hours to bring the victims above ground.

In Canada last month, 72 potash miners walked away from an underground fire and toxic smoke after being locked down overnight in airtight chambers packed with enough oxygen, food and water for several days.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10627198/

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Miners’ families keep faith, despite little hope
Vigil for 65 trapped Mexican workers continues around the clock

SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico — The main entrance to the Pasta de Conchos coal mine sits at the end of a mile-long road, exiting the highway from San Juan de Sabinas.

The blacktop is scarred. Heavy trucks and buses have formed deep grooves. The effect is like a wagon trail made of sun-baked asphalt.

On Tuesday, the side of this road was lined with hundreds of parked cars and pickups. They belong to relatives of the 65 trapped miners who have driven from across the northern state of Coahuila to join in a desperate vigil.

The 65 men were trapped more than a mile underground by a gas explosion Sunday at the mine. They carried only six hours of oxygen with them, but officials pinned their hopes on large fans that were pumping fresh air into the mine and sucking out dangerous gases.

A power outage on Tuesday briefly shut down the ventilation system, but the mine administrator said operators quickly shifted to an alternate diesel-powered system for ventilation.

Yet, officials have said throughout the disaster that there was no way of telling whether or not the oxygen was reaching the miners, and no survivors have been found.

So the relatives and friends of the trapped miners wait.

Many are wrapped in brightly colored blankets and ponchos and praying for a miracle.

Rafaela Castaneda’s husband has worked in the mine for 22 years. She’s here, camped near the mine’s main gate, watching for any sign of life.

“I’m keeping my faith in God,” she said, “that my husband, no, all of them, will come out.”

Sense of impending loss
It’s an uncomfortable existence — the realization of impending loss all too apparent. Women and children sob openly. Men carry the weight of hardship on their shoulders, their faces worn and weathered, expressing both strength and resignation.

“We are in a terrible situation,” one man said. “But, there is hope from all families. Hope has not been lost.”

When clergy members stand on a makeshift stage and offer prayers, those within hearing distance gather, heads bowed, some hands raised. They pray for the miracle that experts say is less likely with each passing hour.

There are volunteers here, too. Serving food and what comfort they can. Thirty students from a nearby nursing school circulate among the hundreds gathered.

Workers from neighboring mines have come to join in the rescue effort.

Staying put
Everyone stomps their feet. In the darkness, to fend off the cold. In the daylight to shake off the black coal dust that coats everything in sight.

You can taste coal in the air here. It covers whatever stops moving — cars, grazing cattle, and people.

But, many of these people won’t move. They are unified by more than the coal dust, but by faith and family.

They are here, waiting at the end of a battered blacktop road, until 65 miners leave the depths of the earth one way or another.

Don Teague is an NBC News Correspondent on assignment in San Juan de Sabinas, Mexico.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11482956/

[canoilers]

I hope they get out safe and sound. I just heard something about the families wanted to take the pit.

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Mexican firm: No miners could have survived
Poisonous gases inside mine end hope for 65 trapped since Sunday

SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico - Toxic gas levels inside a northern Mexican coal mine are too high for any of the 65 miners trapped inside to have survived a nearly week-old explosion, the mining company said Saturday.

The government and scientists previously said there was little hope any of those missing would be found alive.

But an analysis of underground air on Saturday showed it was too poisonous to breathe, said Xavier Garcia, president of Industrial Minera Mexico, a subsidiary of mining company Grupo Mexico SA de CV.

From the period of rescue we have now come to recovery,” Garcia said, his voice cracking.

A pre-dawn explosion Feb. 19 that left the miners trapped released heavy amounts of methane gas and carbon monoxide that spread to every corner of the Pasta de Conchos mine, Garcia said.

“The atmosphere inside the mine changed instantly, converting to an environment of high concentrations of methane and carbon monoxide and leaving the presence of oxygen at almost nil,” he said. “These conditions made survival impossible.”

Rescuers — many miners themselves — were careful not to trigger further explosions as they dug for six days in hopes of finding survivors or the remains of those killed.

Rescue efforts suspended Friday
They were ordered to stop their efforts Friday, however, amid concerns the air inside the mine, near San Juan Sabinas, 85 miles southwest of the U.S. border at Eagle Pass, Texas, put their lives in danger.

Teams of experts drilled holes into the mine Saturday to release toxic gases, and a team of foreign experts — including 10 officials from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration — analyzed the air and found it was unbreatheable, Garcia said.

Conditions inside the mine would likely improve enough for rescuers to return in about two days to the area where they had already been working, Garcia said. It was unclear when they might be able to advance farther and search for the bodies of those killed.

Many of the 600 family members who had taken up residence in a tent city outside the mine went home after the suspension of rescue activities, physically and mentally spent after seven days of desperate emotions and bitter nighttime cold in the windblown desert outside the town of San Juan de Sabinas.

Mining company officials began summoning the about 50 who stayed behind in small groups to break the news to them shortly before the official announcement.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11551416/

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W.Va. mine survivor doesn’t know others died
‘He doesn’t remember everything,’ his wife tells NBC News

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Randal McCloy Jr., the sole survivor of the Sago Mine tragedy two months ago, “is almost Randy again,” his wife told NBC News on Thursday, but he still hasn't mentioned or asked about the 12 men who were with him and died.

The 26-year-old coal miner knows it was an explosion that left him with brain damage and other injuries. But wife Anna has shielded him from news coverage and has not told him that he was the only one to make it out alive, that his friends perished, most of them slowly succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning as they lay in the dark awaiting rescue.

“It only comes in bits and pieces, he doesn't remember everything,” she said on NBC’s “Today” of his recollection about the blast.

But she said that he continues to make progress, is talking and in “good humor.”

On Tuesday, she told The Associated Press that “we’re just going to wait until he basically comes around completely before we come out and tell him, you know, that he’s the only one.”

“He may know. And in a way, I have this feeling that he does,” she said. “I’m just giving him the chance and giving him the time. When he’s ready to talk, he’ll tell me.”

Their few conversations about the accident have been brief and vague, since McCloy is still learning to talk and walk again, spending four hours a day in rigorous therapy at the HealthSouth Mountain View Regional Rehabilitation Hospital.

McCloy and his crew had entered the mine Jan. 2 to resume production after a holiday shutdown when an explosion of still-undetermined origin trapped the 13 men more than two miles inside. It took more than 40 hours for rescue teams to reach them.

McCloy can eat, breathe independently
McCloy was carried out with kidney, lung, liver and heart damage on Jan. 4 and remained in a coma for weeks. Today, he eats and breathes on his own. The left side of his body is strong, and the right is slowly catching up, said Dr. Russ Biundo, medical director at HealthSouth.

McCloy can scan a room and focus his eyes, and he is often able to identify objects held in front of him, distinguishing, say, a pen from a pitcher. He can sometimes put together full sentences.

“He’s able to express his needs. He’s able to tell you where he has pain. His words are astonishingly well-articulated, without any slurring,” Biundo said. “He’ll say things like, ‘I feel fine, thank you.’ Just like that. As plain as day.”

Anna McCloy said she talks with her husband all day long, as if he were at home in their living room.

But Biundo said Randal’s ability to express himself is consistent only when the questions are simple and his attention focused. “Complex questions, complex issues, it’s hard for him to grasp,” he said.

Amount of brain damage unknown
It may be three to six months before McCloy is capable of carrying on a normal conversation, the doctor said. The extent of the brain damage he suffered is still unknown. But Biundo said McCloy has made “astounding progress.”

“I never would have expected him to get so far along in such a short period of time,” Biundo said.

Unable to offer a medical reason for McCloy’s survival, physicians have repeatedly called the youngest of the 13 miners a miracle.

A few days ago, overhearing the word yet again, McCloy smiled at his wife and told her, “I’m a miracle.”

“In a way, I can’t wait till it comes to the point I can tell him why,” she said.

Until then, it is easy to avoid discussing the explosion.

“I don’t want to know how he felt in there,” she said. “It upsets me every time I even think about it. I don’t want to know what he went through. I don’t want to hear what he was feeling. I mean, I do, but I don’t.”

When he worked in the mines, McCloy kept most of his worries to himself. But he did tell his wife that Sago wasn’t safe. “He told me, he said, ‘Something is going to happen, and I’m going to have to get out of there,”’ his wife said.

Not returning to the mines
Before the disaster, Anna McCloy advised her husband to find a new job. “We had all these plans on that,” she said, “but we just didn’t do it quick enough.”

Now the McCloy family is making plans of a different sort, including a trip to Disney World with 4-year-old Randal and 15-month-old Isabel.

“We’re going to have one big family vacation, something we never could do before because it was always work in the way or something in the way,” Anna McCloy said.

But her husband will not be going back to the mines.

Said his wife: “He told me he guarantees me he’ll never work in another mine again.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11627888