Rescue teams yesterday dug slowly by hand to reach 13 coal miners trapped for nearly 24 hours, 80m underground after a methane explosion collapsed a shaft of the Sago Mine in West Virginia, officials said.
There has been no contact with the trapped miners since the explosion early on Monday, and rescuers were digging by hand to prevent sparks from heavy boring equipment setting off another methane blast, said Gene Kitts, a senior vice president of the International Coal Group (ICG) that owns the mine.
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin said some rescue crews were moving slowly through the long tunnels that lead to the collapsed shaft, while others were busy drilling from above the accident site.
PHOTO: AP
"They're drilling an 18cm hole which would be for monitoring and for ventilation also," Manchin told CNN late on Monday. He said global positioning equipment was used to calculate the exact location of the trapped men.
"I believe in miracles. I'm very hopeful and I'm confident that we'll have a positive outcome," Manchin told reporters earlier. "And we'll know something soon."
Dozens of relatives of the trapped miners praying at a local church said their loved ones were trapped about 3km from the entrance and 80m below ground.
Three teams of specially-trained workers entered the Sago Mine after its shaft was ventilated for several hours to remove dangerous gases.
Lara Ramsburg, a spokeswoman for the West Virginia governor's office, said the rescue teams, eight of which were already on location near the town of Tallmansville, would work in shifts through the night to get to the trapped workers.
However, Ramsburg said she expected the operation to be a relatively long process" even under the best of circumstances."
The blast that collapsed the roof of the shaft occurred at dawn on Monday as a 13-member work crew resumed operations after the New Year's holiday, according to Roger Nicholson, another senior ICG vice president.
A second, six-member crew that was moving behind the first heard the explosion but ran into collapsed rock and decided to retreat without making contact with their trapped comrades.
Nicholson suggested that the blast may have been caused by lightning, noting that it had occurred "simultaneously with a very heavy thunderstorm in the region."
But while the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, occupational safety expert Ellen Smith said the Sago Mine had been cited last year for at least 13 serious safety violations, including seepage of volatile gas.
Doug Conaway, an official with the state Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training, acknowledged authorities were aware of the safety violations, but argued they were a common occurrence throughout the industry.
"It's not unusual for an underground coal mine to be cited," he told reporters.
ICG, which went public last year, operates 11 mining complexes, of which 10 are located in northern and central Appalachia and one in central Illinois.
West Virginia, which has been a major coal mining region in the US since the 19th century, had a relatively safe year in 2005, reporting only three fatal mining accidents.
The worst mining tragedy in West Virginia's and US history occurred in 1907 in the community of Monongah, where an explosion killed 362 workers.
A similar rescue operation that was mounted near Somerset, Pennsylvania, in 2002 ended successfully, with all nine coal miners brought to the surface after more than three days underground.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the