Search teams found the bodies of four men missing almost a week since an explosion rocked a West Virginia coal mine, bringing the death toll to 29 in the worst US mining disaster in a generation.
Crews who held out hope that survivors might have made it to an airtight chamber awaiting rescue instead discovered their bodies on Friday in the Upper Big Branch Mine, officials said.
“We did not receive the miracle that we prayed for,” Governor Joe Manchin said early yesterday. “So this journey has ended and now the healing will start.”
Since the Sago mine disaster that killed 12 miners in 2006, refuge chambers had been installed in the mine and held enough oxygen and water to survive for four days. None of the chambers were deployed, Manchin said. He also said the miners did not suffer.
The death toll makes it the worst US coal mining disaster since a 1970 explosion killed 38 in Hyden, Kentucky.
Earlier, federal mine safety administrator Kevin Stricklin had said there was no way anyone in the mine could have survived after the blast unless they were in a refuge shelter.
“There’s no way that life could be sustained in that type of atmosphere, even for a short period of time,” Stricklin said.
Officials say the mission now is to recover all 22 bodies still inside the mine about 48km south of Charleston.
Seven other bodies were recovered after the blast on Monday and two other miners were injured.
“It’s hard to turn a rescue into a recovery with the same group of people,” Stricklin said.
During previous rescue attempts, searchers had to withdraw because of dangerous gases and the risk of fire or explosion.
The first time rescuers went in after the explosion they walked past the four missing miners without seeing them, because of the smoke and dust in the area.
The last miner was found around late Friday, Stricklin said.
The federal mine agency has appointed a team of investigators to look into the blast, which officials said may have been caused by a buildup of methane. US President Barack Obama said he wants a report by next week.
In Whitesville, a community about 10 minutes from the mine, four people playing video poker early yesterday retreated from the noisy machines to listen to the governor break the news.
Patty Ann Manios, a city councilwoman, took off her glasses and started to weep. “Oh God. Oh God,” she said.
“It’s heart wrenching,” Manios said. “They didn’t know what hit them. They just didn’t.”
Donna Ward, whose husband works at a different mine, was still crying minutes after the press conference was over.
“I was hoping for four miracles,” she said.
The mine’s owner, Massey Energy Co, has been repeatedly cited for problems with the system that vents methane and for allowing combustible dust to build up. On the day of the blast, Mining Safety and Health Administration cited the mine with two safety violations — one involving inadequate maps of escape routes, the other concerning an improper splice of electrical cable. However, Stricklin said the violations had nothing to do with the blast.
Massey CEO Don Blankenship has strongly defended the company’s record and disputed accusations from miners that he puts coal profits ahead of safety.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS