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The Sago Mine disaster was a coal mine explosion on January 2 2006 in Tallmansville, West Virginia, USA that resulted in the deaths of 12 miners. Thirteen coal miners were trapped at about 6:30 a.m. (all times Eastern Standard Time) on January 2, in the Sago Mine (pronounced /ˈseɪgoʊ/) 121 miles northeast of the state capital of Charleston.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation. The governor's office said a lightning strike may have caused an explosion deep within the mine shaft. J. Davitt McAteer, the former director of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (USMSHA), said restarting operations after a holiday weekend may have caused sparks to ignite an excess buildup of methane gas and coal dust in the mine. [1]

Forty-one hours after the incident began, twelve of the miners were found dead in the early morning hours of January 4. One, Randal L. McCloy Jr., was found alive, but in critical condition.

At the time McCloy was found alive, it was erroneously reported that 11 others were also alive [2]. Thirty minutes later, the rescue team told company officials that the original report was incorrect. Ben Hatfield, CEO of International Coal Group which owns the mine, states that he asked state troopers to inform clergy to tell people inside Sago Church that there were now conflicting reports, but the news didn't reach family members. They expressed anger that they were allowed to continue to celebrate for another two-and-a-half hours. Officials and reporters blamed "miscommunication" between rescuers and the command center for the erroneous information, but questions were raised about the news media's role in the spread of the incorrect information. [3]

High carbon monoxide (CO) levels delayed the rescue attempt for 12 hours after the disaster occurred. Tests taken through holes drilled from the surface showed that the air near where the miners were last known to be stationed contained 1,300 parts per million of carbon monoxide (400 parts per million is the maximum considered safe). [4]

It was the worst mining disaster in the U.S. since 13 miners were killed by an explosion at a mine near Brookwood, Alabama, in December 2001, and the worst in West Virginia since 1968's Farmington Mine Disaster, which resulted in the passage of the Mine and Health and Safety Act of 1969. [5]

The explosion

The incident occurred at the beginning of the first shift after the mine had closed for the New Year holiday weekend. An inspection at 5:50 a.m. cleared the mine for use. Two carts of miners were making their way into the mine to begin work.

The explosion was heard and felt by many people outside the mine. It is not known what caused it. Some early reports noted that there was a thunderstorm in the area at the time and suggested a lightning strike near the mineshaft may have ignited volatile gases, though no one reported seeing such a strike. Sensors from the National Lightning Detection Network indicated at least two cloud-ground lightning strikes near the mine, CNN reported.

In the winter, changes in barometric pressure can cause methane to pool in mines, a cause of other cold-weather mining accidents.

The apparent cause of the disaster was a methane explosion in a closed and sealed section of the mine. (Methane is the primary component of natural gas, and natural gas wells exist near the mine.) The explosion blew out the concrete seal to the main part of the mine. Due to insufficient air, and/or incomplete mixing of methane and air, the methane was not completely burned to carbon dioxide and water. This produced large amounts of carbon monoxide (CO) that moved through the blown-out seal into the main part of the mine where the miners were trapped. Methane is not especially toxic, but it can suffocate by displacing oxygen. Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, is highly toxic in small concentrations because it binds strongly to the hemoglobin in the blood and renders it useless as an oxygen carrier.

Six men on the second cart escaped the initial explosion. The 13 trapped miners were on the first cart, which apparently passed the point where the explosion occurred. Several of those on the second cart tried to return down the shaft to rescue their coworkers. They made it as far as 9,000 feet (2,743 m) down the shaft before air quality monitors indicated there was too much carbon monoxide to proceed.

Rescuers had to wait 12 hours before beginning to reach the miners due to toxic concentrations of carbon monoxide and methane gas in the shaft after the explosion, which to some suggested a fire. Since the blast disabled the mine's internal communications system, the condition of the 13 miners was unknown. They had air-purifying equipment that would give them seven hours of breathable air, but no oxygen tanks. Emergency supplies were stored in 55-gallon drums within the mine.

The 13 trapped men were located about 2 miles (3.2 km) along the slanting mine shaft, about 280 feet (85 m) below ground. Five four-man teams attempted to make their way down the 5.5-foot (167 cm)-high shaft. As of 12:40 p.m., January 3, the rescue teams had made it 10,200 feet (3,109 m) down the shaft. At the time, it was believed that the trapped miners were somewhere between 11,000 to 13,000 feet (3,352 to 3,962 m) along the shaft.

Immediate aftermath

Rescue effort and recovery

Even after the gases abated, rescuers had to proceed with caution. Safety regulations required that they continually test for dangers to themselves such as water seeps and gas concentrations, limiting their rate of progress to 1,000 feet (305 m) an hour. They checked in every 500 feet (152 m), and then disconnected their telephones until the next checkpoint in order to avoid the possibility of a spark creating another explosion. MSHA had deployed a 1,300-lb. (520 kg) robot into the mineshaft as well, but pulled it out after it got bogged down in mud 70 feet (21 m) from the mine entrance.

Two 6.25-inch (15.9 cm) holes were drilled into the mineshaft from above into areas where the miners were believed to be. Microphones and video cameras lowered into them for ten-minute periods did not find any signs of life. Air quality tests performed through the first hole on the morning of January 3 that indicated CO levels in that part of the shaft were at 1,300 parts per million, over three times the 400 parts per million tolerance of the human body. Officials called this "very discouraging." A third hole encountered groundwater and could not be drilled all the way down.

However, the miners were very experienced and trained to find a safe part of the tunnel and barricade themselves into it in the event of an explosion or collapse. Experts expected that a third hole, if successful, could expand the opening and provide a better way of rescuing the miners than going the long way down the shaft. Miners are required to carry a Self-Contained Self-Rescuer (SCSR) that provides a brief supply of oxygen for evacuation.

Twelve miners were initially thought to be alive, but these reports were false. International Coal Group CEO Ben Hatfield confirmed that there was only one survivor, Randall McCloy, Jr., approximately three hours after reports first surfaced of 12 survivors. This was the first official report from the company since the victims were found. On January 5, notes written by some of the deceased miners were submitted to family members [6].

Soon after the first reports of survivors surfaced, several ambulances were seen lining up at the scene to prepare to transport the miners. Hospital spokesperson Turner said that the hospital ER was prepared to respond to a situation in which 12 miners were able to find some shelter and await rescue. The remaining miners were found at the working face of the second left portion of the mine, some 2.5 miles from the mine entrance, behind a "rough barricade structure," as described by Hatfield [7]. This is the same area where drillings indicated high carbon monoxide levels.

Hatfield indicated that carbon monoxide levels in the area where the miners were found was in the range of 300-400 ppm when the rescue team arrived. This is near the safe threshold level to support life. He said that carbon monoxide poisoning was the likely cause of death.

"Our intentions are to do the right thing and protect our people the best we can," Hatfield said. Federal and state mining officials will conduct a "thorough investigation" of the accident "with full company support."

Early response of government officials

Governor Joe Manchin, who lost an uncle in the 1968 Farmington Mining Disaster, arrived at the Sago site on January 2 after flying in from Atlanta, Georgia, where he was preparing to watch the West Virginia University Mountaineers football team play in the Sugar Bowl. West Virginia Republican Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito also joined the governor and family members.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration had approximately 25 people on the scene at any given time, according to the Agency's Web site.

Medical treatment for survivor

On the site and in Buchannon at St. Joseph's Hospital

The sole survivor, Randal McCloy, Jr., 26, was found, according to Kitts "by the sound of moans" and needed urgent resuscitation. Hatfield said that the rescuers, while treating him, had to walk 3/4 of a mile before taking a tram another two miles to the surface. [8] There he was treated at a triage center set up at the mine, then taken by ambulance to St. Joseph's Hospital in nearby Buchannon, at about 1:30 am on January 4, 2006. Hospital spokesperson Lisa Turner said that when found, McCloy was still wearing his breathing apparatus.

Dr. Susan Long, a surgeon at St. Joseph's, said McCloy was unconscious but moaning when he arrived and was in critical condition. Long said McCloy's carbon monoxide levels were negative, he was dehydrated, but did not have visible burns. She stated, "We have no ideas what happened in there. We have no idea if he received trauma in there." She said he had no obvious wounds. "I think he was cold. I think he was in shock. He had no obvious trauma to his head or anywhere really." [9]

Transfer to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown

After being stabilized, McCloy was transported by ambulance to a level 1 trauma center at Ruby Memorial Hospital, 50 miles away in Morgantown.

Hyperbaric Treatment in Pittsburgh

He was transferred to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh on the evening of January 5, 2006 to receive infusions of oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber to counteract the effects of carbon monoxide that McCloy breathed while trapped in the mine. [10]

Tests showed McCloy to be suffering from brain hemorrhaging and edema, muscle injury, faulty liver and heart function. On January 7, 2006, Dr. Richard Shannon, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Allegheny General, stated that after receiving three hyperbaric treatments, McCloy was “not out of the woods” but was showing signs of improved brain stem and organ function. There was “evidence of neurological damage, but what can't be measured are the clinical consequences” McCloy will need to be ventilated and dialyzed "for the foreseeable future.”

Return to Ruby Memorial

On the evening of January 7, 2006, a helicopter returned McCloy, who was clinically stable, to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown. On January 8, doctors there said that it had always been their plan to bring McCloy back to West Virginia after three days in Pittsburgh. They had stopped sedating McCloy but it could be hours or days before he would wake up and he remained in critical condition.

At a press conference on the morning of January 9, 2006 Larry Roberts, MD, director of the Jon Michael Moore Trauma Center, the emergency treatment branch of Ruby Mermorial [11] at WVU Hospitals, stated that McCloy was breathing on his own, but still attached to a ventilator. His lungs are inflated and he remains unchanged neurologically. It was too soon to know if the sedative medication had cleared his system. [12]

At a press briefing on January 10, 2006, Dr. Roberts reported that McCloy remained in a coma and had a mild fever. Dr. Julian Bailes, chair of neurosurgery, reported that McCloy's EEG test showed considerable brain wave activity and that an MRI had helped pinpoint which areas of the brain were injured by carbon monoxide exposure. [13]

The hospital established a web page for written updates. There would be no further briefings until there was a significant change. [14]

Mine Ownership

Anker West Virginia Mining

Anker West Virginia Mining is listed as the permittee for the Sago Mine.

International Coal Group (ICG)

In March 2005, ICG agreed to acquire Anker Coal Group, Inc. {In its third quarter report dated October 26, 2005, ICG reported, "All conditions to closing the acquisitions have been satisfied other than effectiveness of the related registration statement." [15]

International Coal Group, Inc. [16] was formed in May 2004 by investor Wilbur Ross, who led a group that bought many of Horizon Natural Resources' assets in a bankruptcy auction. The company produces coal from 12 mining complexes in Northern and Central Appalachia (Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia) and from one complex in the Illinois Basin.

International Coal Group announced that on January 5, 2005, it brought in Dix & Eaton to assist with communications efforts regarding the Sago Mine accident. [17]

Investigation and inspections

The Department of Labor which oversees MSHA, is opening an independent investigation into the cause of the explosion. "The team will be headed up by a senior MSHA safety professional who has not been part of the initial inspection and enforcement efforts," their Web site says.

Lightning Strike and Seismic Activity

Weatherbug, a Germantown, MD-headquartered weather tracking system reported on January 6, 2006 that “The evidence suggests that the lightning strike could have caused the explosion due to the correlation between the timing and location of the lightning strike and seismic activity.”

The company's equipment detected 100 lightning strikes in the region within 40 minutes of the explosion. A single, powerful lightning strike registered at or near the mouth of the Sago mine at 6:26:36 a.m. This strike held a particularly strong positive charge of 35 kAmps. (A typical strike is 22 to 25 kAmps.)

Dr. Martin Chapman, PhD, a Virginia Tech research assistant professor, found that two independent sensors recorded a minor seismic event, possibly from the explosion, 2 seconds later at 6:26:38 a.m. [18]

Safety violations

The Sago Mine is operated by the Ashland, Kentucky-based International Coal Group (ICG), which bought the mine from its bankrupt owner, Anker West Virginia Mining Company, in November 2005. Opened in 1999, the mine was closed for two years beginning in 2002. A slope mine, it employs 145 miners and produces 800,000 tons (720,000 tonnes) of coal a year.

In 2005, the mine was cited by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) 208 times for violating regulations, up from 68 in 2004. Of those, 96 were considered significant and substantial. ^[19] Additionally, West Virginia's Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training issued 144 citations over that year, up from 74 the previous year.

Some of those citations were for violations that could have been factors in the accident, such as failure to control methane and coal-dust accumulation, failure to properly shore up shafts against collapse and overall deficiencies in emergency planning.

However, MSHA reports that none of the violations were considered to be an "immediate risk of injury" and that all but three violations, related to shoring up the roof, were corrected by the time of the accident. They say the increased violations were related to increased inspections.^[20]

Mining operations at the Sago Mine more than doubled between 2004 and 2005, prompting MSHA to dramatically increase – by 84% – its on-site inspection and enforcement presence. As a result, MSHA also took significantly more enforcement actions – 208 in total – against Sago Mine in 2005, requiring the operator to quickly correct health and safety violations in accordance with federal Mine Act standards.

MSHA records also showed that since the year 2000, Sago miners had suffered 42 injuries that resulted in lost work time. In 2004 the mine's injury rate for hours worked was nearly three times the national average.

Media coverage

News of the Sago mine explosion first broke widely to television viewers on the cable news channel CNN. At approximately 11:41 a.m. on January 2, during CNN Live Today, anchor Daryn Kagan, announced, "This just in, news out of West Virgina, an underground explosion at a coal mine there."

Hundreds of media, reporters, camera crews, satellite trucks and photographers descended on the small community, taking over yards and setting up camp outside the Sago Baptist Church and at the mine's coal processing plant. Officials had turned a small second-story room there into a make-shift briefing room for the media.

CNN, Fox News with Geraldo Rivera and MSNBC with Rita Cosby all broadcast live from Sago throughout the night of January 3 and early morning of January 4 as the story continually changed.

Shortly before rumors started spreading that the miners were found alive Tuesday night (and then reversed Wednesday morning), a reporter there posted a description of the scene on his blog:

Sago Road, where the mine is, follows the Buckhannon River and a set of railroad tracks. When you arrive just outside the Sago Baptist church, where relatives and friends of the miners have gathered, you see cars. Everywhere, lining the roads, in people's yards, there are cars as far as you can see. Then, you see satellite trucks and TV crews and reporters and photographers. They're also everywhere and you can tell our presence, just under 24 hours at the time, is taking a toll on the small town and the little area we've taken over.

Miscommunication and wrong reports

File:Seattle-pi.sago-mine.png

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer as of 12:30am EST on January 4, 2006

About 11:50 p.m. on January 3, news services including the Associated Press and Reuters reported that 12 of the 13 miners had survived, attributing the reports of survivors to the family members. CNN.com and other websites sported headlines including "We Got 12 Alive!" as well as "Believe in Miracles: 12 Miners Found Alive." [21]

Gov. Manchin, who was in the church with the families when the first incorrect reports began to come in, was soon seen outside the church celebrating "a miracle." The governor later said that his staff never confirmed that there were survivors, but was euphoric along with the families at what seemed to be remarkable news.

Congresswoman Capito appeared on CNN about 1:00 a.m. and said 12 miners had been brought out alive.

File:Lynetteroby.jpg

Lynette Roby being interviewed by CNN television journalist Anderson Cooper on January 4, 2006.

At about 2:45 a.m., Lynette Roby, a resident of Sago, and her two young children told CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper that Hatfield had just told family members in the church that a miscommunication had taken place and only one of the 13 miners had been found alive. The family members reportedly began to shout and call mine officials "liars" and at least one person in the church had "lunged" at mine officials.

Hatfield confirmed the miscommunication at a press conference shortly thereafter. Initial information indicated that the miscommunication occurred between the rescue team in the mine and the command center at the surface. According to Hatfield, several personnel at the center were able to simultaneously hear the communications directly from the rescue team. Because of the state regulatory officials on site, both company and state officials, including representatives from the governor's office, were present at the command center. Hatfield estimated that 15-20 minutes elapsed before they learned that there was in fact a miscommunication.

"Bad information"

The CEO said he did not know how the reports of 12 survivors spread, and noted that ICG never officially made that statement, calling it "bad information" that "spread like wildfire." He said that the information could have been spread through "stray cell phone communication." "I have no idea who made that announcement," he said, "but it was not an announcement that International Coal Group had authorized."

Asked by reporters why the company allowed rumors to circulate for several hours, Hatfield said officials had been trying to clarify and verify information before putting family members on an even worse emotional rollercoaster. However, Fox correspondent Bill Hemmer said he was "ashamed" of how the media repeatedly reported the existence of survivors even as reporters and producers themselves were growing to understand that, in his words, "something didn't add up."

Hemmer noted that the coal company, which had been quite punctual in its dealings with the media throughout the rescue attempt, had not given any information to corroborate the allegations that 12 miners had been rescued, and that the always-available Manchin was nowhere to be found, yet the cable news channels continued to report the story anyway until doctors in a hospital many miles away stated that they had had no contact with emergency service personnel about any of the miners except for McCloy.

Speaking on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning program, Lisa Daniels speculated that erroneous reports about survivors on local radio stations were heard by mine officials, causing them to question the accuracy of their own information stating that 12 of the 13 were dead, which in turn delayed an official announcement.

File:Nytimes sago mine2.gif

Article heading appearing at approximately 3am, January 4, 2006 on the New York Times website.

Wrong headlines

Many Wednesday morning newspapers in the United States erroneously reported on their front pages that 12 miners were found alive. (pdf) USA Today ran a headline in their East Coast edition that read "'Alive!' Miners beat odds". The printed New York Times attributed their information to the family members, but the Times's website initially displayed an article heading that expressed the live rescue as fact (see screen capture at right). Others, such as the Washington Post, were unclear as to to whom they attributed their information.

In a published report on the website of the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher, the editor of The Inter-Mountain, a local afternoon daily based in Elkins, West Virginia blamed the national media's inaccurate reporting on a lack of knowledge of local culture. ""We get a lot of people here who sometimes believe they have an inside story because they hear it on a police scanner or listen to a conversation," [Linda] Skidmore said. "We know to be cautious of those situations."[22]

Media criticism of MSHA

Broader criticisms of how mine safety is handled by the federal government were also made in the aftermath of the disaster; such criticisms have been considered controversial by some.

Some have suggested that the severity of the accident's aftermath may have been related in part to inadequate safety standards endorsed by the MSHA under David Lauriski, a mining industry executive appointed to head the agency by George W. Bush [23]. Among other problems cited was the rejection of a proposed clarification of an existing standard, "Escapeways and Refuges," by Lauriski's administration, which requires that a mine "shall have two or more separate, properly maintained escapeways to the surface..." [24]. This suggestion was derided by a number of Bush supporters and conservative commentators, including columnist Michelle Malkin [25] and bloggers for the National Review [26], who claimed it was an attempt to blame Bush for the disaster; others disputed the question of whether or not safety standards and enforcement were indeed relaxed by the Bush administration [27].

A January 5 editorial in the New York Times [28] explicitly linked the safety conditions at the mine to the effects of "an industry with pervasive political clout and patronage inroads in government regulatory agencies." It noted that "political figures from both parties have long defended and profited from ties to the coal industry," and asserted that "the Bush administration's cramming of important posts in the Department of the Interior with biased operatives" created doubts about mine safety, singling out Steven Griles, a former mining lobbyist and onetime deputy secretary of the Interior who, the Times alleged "devoted four years to rolling back mine regulations." Federal responsibility for enforcing the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, which governs the activities of the MSHA, was transfered from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Labor in 1978 [29].

A second editoral in the Times, on January 6 [30] discussed budget cuts to the MSHA and "the Bush administration's ... [appointment] of a raft of political appointees directly from energy corporations to critical regulatory posts" in the context of the disaster, suggesting that the Sago 12 "might have survived if government had lived up to its responsibilities."

Other commentators, including Kevin Drum, a blogger for the Washington Monthly [31], and Andrew Sullivan [32], also linked the presence of Republican-appointed coal mining executives in the MSHA to the tragedy.

Jack Spadaro, a former director of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy who was fired after participating as a whistleblower in a prior case involving the MSHA [33], made similar statements, referring to the "[current Bush administration's] reluctance to take the strong enforcement action that's sometimes necessary" in an appearance on the show Hannity and Colmes. Spadaro was criticized as "extreme left-wing" for his statements by host Sean Hannity [34].

The MSHA, on a "Questions and Answers" page [35] regarding the incident, has strongly disputed many of these criticisms. In particular, the administration noted that the Sago mine was not an "accident waiting to happen" as the MSHA had never cited the mine for violations that would lead to "immediate risk of injury." It noted also that it had exercised its right to shut down various parts of the mine, eighteen times in 2005, until safety problems were corrected.

Most relevant to the criticisms discussed in this section, the MSHA explicitly disputed the suggestion that "MSHA has grown 'too soft' on mine operators and has not been aggressive enough in enforcing the Mine Act." It noted that between 2000 and 2005, the number of citations it had issued had increased by 4%, and the number of coal-mine specific citations had increased by 18%.

Dennis O'Dell, of the United Mine Workers of America union, disputed this response, suggesting that the fines MSHA handed to companies for these violations were too small to force action. A Knight Ridder "investigative report", published on January 7 and containing reference to the official MSHA response, concluded that "Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed." [36].

Victims

Identities

Of the thirteen miners, Randal L. McCloy Jr. (age 26) was the only survivor. The remaining twelve, did not survive:

Thomas P. Anderson, age 39
Alva Martin Bennett, age 51
Jim Bennett, age 61 (shuttle car operator)
Jerry Groves, age 56
George Junior Hamner, age 54
Terry Helms, age 50
Jesse L. Jones, age 44
David Lewis, age 28
Martin Toler Jr. age 51 (mine foreman)
Fred Ware Jr., age 58
Jack Weaver, age 51
Marshall Winans, age 50

Farewell notes left to families

Family members reported that at least four notes were found.

Martin Toler Jr.: “Tell all I see them on the other side. It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep. I love you Jr.’’

A photograph of the note was published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on January 6 2006. [37]

Jim Bennett:

Bennett left a note which wasn't shared with the media. His daughter, Ann Meredith, said that in addition to expressions of love for his wife and children, Bennett's note contained a timeline of ten hours duration. "Later on down the note, he said that it was getting dark. It was getting smoky. They were losing air." [38]

@@ Line 220: / Line 220: @@
 * [http://www.msha.gov/drs/drshome.htm MSHA Data Retrieval System] - Mine Identification Number (ID) #4608791
 * [http://www.msha.gov/REGS/ACT/ACT1.HTM#7 Federal Mine Safety and health Act of 1977]
+* [http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?AID=346246 Transcending Death at Sago]
 === References ===