MONTCOAL, W.Va. — Rescuers held out slim hope Tuesday that four missing coal miners might have survived when a mine repeatedly cited for improperly venting methane gas exploded, killing 25 people in the country’s deadliest underground disaster in a quarter-century.
A day after the blast in southern West Virginia, desperate rescuers began boring into the mine in hopes of releasing poisonous gases so crews could go in search of the men. But Gov. Joe Manchin said it could be today before much progress is made.
“I don’t want to give anybody any false hope, but by golly, if I’m on that side of the table, and that’s my father or my brother or my uncle or my cousins, I’m going to have hope,” he said.
The missing miners might have been able to reach airtight chambers stocked with food, water and enough oxygen for four days.
On Tuesday, bulldozers carved an access road to make way for drilling crews, who planned to dig four shafts to vent methane, a highly combustible gas that accumulates naturally in coal mines, and carbon monoxide from the blast site about 1,000 feet beneath the surface.
Massey Energy Co., which owns the Upper Big Branch mine, was fined more than $382,000 in the past year for repeated serious violations involving its ventilation plan and equipment.
The company’s chief executive said the mine was not unsafe, but federal regulators planned to review its many violations.
Diana Davis said her husband, Timmy, 51, died in the explosion along with his nephews Josh Napper, 27, and Cory Davis, 20.
The elder Davis’ son, Timmy Jr., described his father as passionate about the outdoors and the mines.
“He loved to work underground,” he said. “He loved that place.”
Two other family members survived the blast, he said.
At the time of the explosion, 61 miners were in the mine, about 30 miles south of Charleston.
“Before you knew it, it was just like your ears stopped up. You couldn’t hear. And the next thing you know, it’s just like you’re just right in the middle of a tornado,” miner Steve Smith, who heard the explosion but was able to escape, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, described how the rescue teams gradually descended through a long, sloping shaft where the miners were operating a huge machine that carves coal from the walls. He said the teams increasingly encountered debris from the mine’s ventilation system and other materials.
Federal officials decided to call off the rescue after high methane readings in the far reaches of the mine.
“The decision was that you can’t risk 40 rescue workers,” said Don Blankenship, chief executive of Massey Energy.
Seven bodies have been recovered and identified. Two miners injured in the blast were being treated at hospitals.
The death toll was the highest in a U.S. mine since 1984, when 27 people died in a fire at Emery Mining Corp.’s mine in Orangeville, Utah. If the four missing bring the total to 29, it would be the most killed in a U.S. coal mine since a 1970 explosion killed 38 at Finley Coal Co. in Hyden, Ky.
Massey Energy, a publicly traded company based in Richmond, Va., ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most profitable. It has 2.2 billion tons of coal reserves in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia and Tennessee.
Blankenship said the mine was “not thought to be unsafe by the agencies or the company.”
