tragedy in mines

Wednesday morning in Tallmansville, West Virginia, the families of the twelve trapped miners were informed that despite the rumors, only one of the men had survived the accident. The twelve miners were trapped in the Sago Mine 260 feet below the ground surface due to an explosion early Monday. Families had been given “miscommunicated” information when one family received a phone call saying the workers had found twelve3 bodies and were being checked for vital signs. Word leaked that all of the men were alive, causing for celebration. Three hours later, the miracle the crowd thought had occurred was crushed when only one of the miners, twenty-seven-year-old Randal McCloy, made it from the mine alive. Inside the mine, the men had put up sheets used to block the poisonous carbon monoxide from reaching them, as well as individual clothes to cover their mouths. Time, however, was their killer. The air in the mine was found to contain a high concentration of carbon monoxide, which is lethal in large doses. Today, the people are struggling to focus on the survival of the one miner.

On November 20, 1968, another mining accident occurred in West Virginia at the Consol No. 9 mine. Early that morning an explosion sparked a raging fire that tore through the cave. The origin of the explosion was never determined, but several safety precautions, seemed to have been omitted that day providing logical explanations for the event. Only twenty-one of the miners were able to escape the mine, leaving seventy-eight of the remaining workers missing. In order to extinguish the fire, all entrances to the mine were closed and the search was ceased. Similar to the current mining accident in the Sago mines, workers received high readings of underground gases, such as carbon monoxide, that prevented the trapped miners from surviving. With the tragic loss of the eleven miners this week, memories of past mining accidents of West Virginia loom in the air.