New York Daily News

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. – Rescuers were racing against time Monday night to reach 13 West Virginia coal miners trapped by a blast in the bowels of the earth while worried relatives prayed for their deliverance.

There had been no contact with the miners since the explosion, possibly sparked by a lighting strike, erupted a little after 6 a.m. at the Sago Mine outside Tallmansville, W.Va.

The first rescue teams had to turn back because of high carbon monoxide levels and officials feared the mine could become a coal-lined coffin because the miners’ air purifiers can provide only a few hours of clean air and the men have no oxygen tanks.

“You just have to hope that the explosions weren’t of the magnitude that was horrific from the beginning,” West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said.

“There’s always that possibility – that hope and that chance – they were able to go to a part of the mine that still has safe air,” he said. “There’s places they can retreat in all these mines. They have catacombs.”

Relatives said the miners were heading for an underground staging area and were 2 miles into the mine and about 260 feet below ground when the explosion hit.

Fearing that heavy boring equipment could spark another methane blast, rescuers were reduced to moving tons of rubble by hand.

“That’s why this is such a slow process,” said Gene Kitts, a senior vice president of the International Coal Group, which owns the mine. The explosion also knocked out the mine’s communication system, cutting off all contact with the trapped men.

So at the nearby Sago Baptist Church, where the miners’ relatives had gathered, all they could do was wait and worry.

One trapped miner, 61-year-old Jim Bennett, planned to retire this year, said his son-in-law Daniel Merideth.

“Every day he would come home and pray for who was going in,” he said.

Samantha Lewis, whose 28-year-old husband, David, was among those trapped, said he took the job because the pay was good: “Unless you’re a coal miner or you have a college degree, you don’t make any money.”

Located about 100 miles northeast of Charleston, W.Va., the mine was idle over the holidays and the trapped miners were on the first shift returning to work as a severe thunderstorm strafed the region.

The miners were in two cars heading into the mine shaft when there was a roar and everything went black.

“It’s a horrible freak accident,” ICG chairman Wilbur Ross said. “Apparently, a lightning bolt struck the mine.”

The 13 men in the first car were cut off by a wall of debris from the four men in the second car, who tried valiantly to dig out their colleagues and called for help.

Kitts said one of the miners was a veteran with 35 years in the pit and that all miners are trained to deal with being buried alive.

“If the miners are barricaded, as we hope they are, they would prepare themselves for rescue by rationing their lunches and water,” he said.

ICG acquired the mine in March when it bought the bankrupt Anker West Virginia Mining Co. The mine has been slapped with $35,885 in fines for failing to safeguard against methane and roof falls since 2002, according to the Department of Labor. Twenty-eight injuries were reported, but no fatalities, during that same time period.

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RELIVING A NIGHTMARE

As word of Monday’s mining catastrophe rippled throughout the country, one tight-knit mining community in rural Pennsylvania relived a nightmare.

“Waiting is the worst part,” said Ronald Hileman, 54, one of nine miners rescued out of Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania after a harrowing three days in July 2002. “You don’t even know if folks realize you are down there.”

The nation did realize, watching the drama unfold minute by nail-biting minute as rescuers drilled through the rock-solid mine, heard the men were alive in an air pocket and lowered a rescue capsule into the tunnel.

Finally, after 77 hours, the weary, soot-covered, water-soaked heroes were hoisted to safety.

Mark Popernick, 44, the last of the men to escape Quecreek, called his wife, Sandy, when he heard Monday about the West Virginia miners – his voice wobbly. “It gives me chills,” she recalled him saying.

For 42-year-old Sandy, time froze when her husband was buried alive nearly 300 feet below the surface that July day.

“What those men and their families are experiencing is not a good situation,” she said.

So traumatizing was being trapped that only two of the nine are still mining, according to former Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker.

“They are God-fearing folks these days,” he said. “They love seeing the sunrise.”

Amy Foy, 30 of Berlin, Pa., was elated when her father, Thomas, survived the ordeal. Now she hopes the 13 miners in West Virginia enjoy the same fate.

“Just pray for them and their families,” Foy said, because waiting is “hell.”

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