Rescue teams drilled a hole early Wednesday into a West Virginia coal mine where at least 25 workers died Monday in an explosion, but they got no response from four other miners who remain unaccounted for, authorities said.
In a news conference near the site of the mine disaster in Montcoal, W.Va., Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) said crews were drilling a second hole next to the first one that penetrated the Upper Big Branch Mine nearly 1,100 feet below the surface — part of an effort to clear out poisonous gases so that rescue personnel can reenter the mine to search for the four missing miners and recover the bodies of those known to have perished. A third hole was being drilled nearby, and the mine’s owner said there were plans for two more holes.
Authorities also plan to set off small explosions on the surface and check for any responses indicating that someone is still alive deep underground.
In Washington, the federal government’s mine safety agency said it would send a team of investigators and Labor Department lawyers to evaluate all aspects of the accident, including the potential causes of the blast and whether the mine’s owner, Richmond-based Massey Energy Co., was in compliance with federal health and safety standards. The probe is expected to take weeks, if not months.
There was little chance that anyone survived what Manchin described as a “horrific” explosion — possibly set off by toxic methane gas or coal dust — that ripped through Upper Big Branch on Monday afternoon, leaving rail tracks twisted like pretzels. Some of the miners could have been killed by the blast, while others could have succumbed to the poisonous methane and carbon monoxide that accumulated in the mine, officials said.
Virtually the only hope for the four missing miners was that they managed to make it to a rescue chamber stocked with food, water and oxygen, officials said. They said the supplies in each rescue chamber are sufficient to sustain 15 miners for at least four days and that the provisions would last much longer for a smaller number of survivors.
The families of the missing “are still prayerful and very hopeful that we still have a miracle, maybe,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday morning. He said rescue workers banged on a drill pipe that was inserted into the mine but that “we did not get any response back.”
But Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), later said no signals were sent down the borehole and that the drilling itself was the noise that could have been heard inside the mine if anyone were alive there to listen.
Stricklin said two teams of 15 rescuers each were getting ready to reenter the mine once the gases had been cleared, with one group advancing about a mile and a half to where the victims are believed to be and the other team serving as a backup.
In an update posted on its Web site, Massey Energy said that of the 25 confirmed fatalities, 11 have been identified, and the bodies of seven of them have been removed from the mine. Four of those identified remain in the mine, along with 14 who “have been confirmed as fatalities but not identified,” Massey said.
If the four missing miners also turn out have died, the death toll of 29 would make the Upper Big Branch disaster the nation’s deadliest mining accident in 40 years.
Manchin said two injured miners who were brought out after the explosion remain hospitalized, one of them in intensive care. He said family members were clinging to “a sliver of hope” that the four missing men could have somehow survived.
Full story: Rescue crews making second attempt to drill into W. Virginia mine
