Sago, W. Va. – Family and friends held a solemn but hopeful vigil in a damp, foggy bottom in this tiny Upshur County community. They were waiting to hear news of the 13 miners trapped by an explosion at Sago Mine just down the road.
By this morning, after mine company officials said they were discouraged by dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide, community members seemed to retreat into the Sago Baptist Church.
On Monday, the church became the designated gathering place for those praying for a miracle. Inside, the pews had been removed and replaced by banquet tables. Loved ones also were receiving periodic updates as to the progress of the rescue efforts.
Members of the American Red Cross and church parishioners supplied food and drink to those who either wept or comforted the weeping at the tables. Pizza delivery drivers from local shops sloshed through the mud in their cars. Men carried boxes of bottled water and bags of toilet tissue and paper towels.
Still more people gathered outside on the lawns of the mine’s neighbors. They leaned on pickup trucks and sat in lawn chairs. They shuffled through the ever-collecting black muck. Some held each other.
At one point in late afternoon, Wease Day, pastor at the church, stood on an impromptu pulpit in the back of a pickup and told those gathered not to be alarmed by the arrival of a mobile morgue that was en route to the scene.
It’s standard procedure, Day said.
Loretta Ables, 34, leaned against a wet split-rail fence covered in a hard green fungus. Her face was a mask of anguish and worry as she spoke of her fiance, Fred Ware, 59.
“We’re standing on his land,” Ables said.
When Ware works, the couple lives right across a small river from the mine. In his off time, they live in Buckhannon with Ables’ two children.
Ables held a white cup full of black coffee as she talked. The coffee spilled over the brim as her hands trembled.
“I got him up five minutes after five o’clock this morning,” Ables said. “He told me he loved me, and he told me he would see me this evening.” Ware, a mine operator, had previously broken his ankle in the mine when a rock fell off a rib. His ankle is now largely metal and bolts.
“He’s a real sweetheart,” Ables said. “His lifestyle is to have family around him.” The two had been planning a Valentine’s Day wedding. They have been engaged for about six years.
When a relative called her in the morning to break the news that Ware was in the mine, Ables said she punched a wall.
“He’s given me 35 gray hairs sitting here worrying myself over him,” Ables said. “I pray to God he’s alive.” Ables pointed to a man named Roger who was one of the miners who were able to escape.
He sat in the front seat of a pickup guarded by a few men. Roger was hit in the eyes by the explosion and he wore sunglasses. The men wouldn’t let anyone near him.
One mother sat in a lawn chair half-sunk in the muddy grass. Her legs were covered with a thick, black blanket.
“My son’s in there,” she said calmly. “I really just don’t want to talk about it.” Dean and Chris Toler, both of Flatwoods, got to the scene pretty early after learning their brother and father, Martin Toler, 50, also of Flatwoods, was one of the miners trapped behind a reported wall of rock below the surface.
Dean, 54, said there hadn’t been too many accidents at the mine during the time his brother has worked there, except for some “bad top” or roof problems.
Martin, a mine foreman, has worked in the industry for most of his life, as has most of the Toler family, Chris said.
“We’re worried to death,” Chris said.
Chris, 29, previously worked with his father in a different mine for about four years before Chris was laid off. Now working at a lumberyard, Chris lives about 200 yards from his father.
In the 32 years Dean has been a miner, he said he’s never seen any accident as bad as what is unfolding at Sago.
Like many West Virginians, the Tolers went down into the mines for the financial incentive.
“You can’t beat the money,” Dean said.
The Toler family has been around mining for so long, they usually didn’t give the safety of the work much thought.
But that has changed.
“I’m going to tell him to retire when he gets out,” Chris said.
(The Charleston, W.Va., Daily Mail is a member of the ap News Service. ap owns the Denver Post.)
