West Virginia coal mine rescue crews race against time
Attempts to contact 4 missing miners prove fruitless. Workers drill a new ventilation hole at site where 25 men were killed Monday; governor says there’s only ‘a sliver of hope’ of finding survivors.
Reporting from Washington and Montcoal, W. Va.
Emergency teams stepped up a frantic rescue effort Wednesday despite dwindling hopes of finding four missing miners two days after a devastating explosion killed 25 men in the Upper Big Branch mine.
Crews began digging a fifth bore hole deep into the rocky mountainside in an effort to ventilate the deadly buildup of highly combustible methane gas, carbon monoxide and coal dust that forced rescue crews to retreat early Tuesday.
Gov. Joe Manchin III admitted that rescue crews hold only “a sliver of hope” that the four missing miners survived.
“The odds are not in our favor because of the horrendous blast we had,” he told reporters who gathered at a nearby elementary school.
Officials said the explosion occurred at 3:02 p.m. Monday as 31 miners were coming off the day shift. The blast knocked out lights, communications and ventilation fans, and created a windstorm that roared up shafts to the surface, shooting rocks, dirt and debris into the air.
After the blast subsided, several miners rushed inside and found six men dead and three injured; one of the injured later died. The other two remain hospitalized after the nation’s deadliest coal mining accident in more than a quarter century.
Two 15-member rescue teams waited by the mine entrance Wednesday afternoon, and officials said they anticipate sending the first team back inside as soon as it’s safe.
“The rescue teams are prepared, they’re charged, set and ready to go,” Manchin said.
Kevin Stricklin, coal administrator for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the teams may need several hours to reach the area where the missing miners are believed to be located, about two miles down.
“They may not be in the exact location we think they are, so we may have to fan out a bit,” he said.
Three of the missing miners may have holed up in an airtight refuge chamber that would provide enough food, water and air to survive for several days, while the location of the fourth was not known, officials said.
Ronald L. Wooten, director of West Virginia’s office of miners’ health safety and training, said the rescue teams had detected no evidence of survivors. “We just have hope,” he added.
Initial attempts to establish contact before dawn Wednesday, by banging for 15 minutes on a bore hole pipe from the surface, failed to elicit a response. Miners are trained to respond to such signals by pounding on equipment or metal bolts in the mine roof.
Microphones lowered into the bore holes also failed to pick up signs of life, although the drilling in nearby rocks may be drowning out other noise. Emergency workers planned to detonate three small explosions on the surface to send seismic signals to anyone alive.
Drilling crews expected to punch ventilation bore holes about 1,100 feet deep into the mine by Wednesday afternoon, and then install powerful fans to draw out poisonous methane and other explosive gases.
The names of the four missing miners have not been released.
The cause of the explosion is undetermined, although the mine owner, Massey Energy Co., has come under increasing fire for a spotty record of safety operations at Upper Big Branch, including 10 citations this year for inadequate ventilation of explosive gases.
Several members of Congress vowed to hold hearings into the disaster and seek tougher mine safety rules.
“Clearly we must get to the bottom of what happened, how, and who was responsible,” Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), a former coal miner, said in a statement. “And we must and will hold those parties responsible.”
