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Coal Miners' Families Speak of Loved Ones Lost

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 May 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Emily Bazar

BUCKHANNON, W.Va. -- James Bennett planned to retire in April and trade coal mining for travel and adventure.

"He never got the chance," his daughter, Ann Merideth, said at an emotional hearing Tuesday on the mining disaster that ended Bennett's life.

Four months to the day after an explosion ripped through the Sago Mine and led to the deaths of 12 men, Merideth and other family members offered pained tributes to their loved ones.

They also demanded accountability.

"The reason I'm here today is to get some answers," Merideth said at the hearing.

Family members, some choking as they spoke, wore white T-shirts with their loved ones' names on the front and a full list of the lost miners on the back. Photos of each of the miners faced the audience.

"What really caused the explosion?" Merideth asked. "And why did it take so long for the rescue crews to be called?"

Much of Day 1 of the hearing belonged to the families, who delivered prepared statements and questioned witnesses.

"They have a right to participate in this hearing, and they have a right to insist that their questions be answered," said J. Davitt McAteer, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin's adviser on the investigation by state and federal mine safety regulators.

The hearing is scheduled to conclude today with discussion of the rescue operation.

McAteer said Manchin wants him to prepare a report on the accident by July 1, but he warned that the investigation may not be finished by then.

According to an investigation by International Coal Group, the mine's owner, a lightning strike triggered the explosion.

Government investigators have not pinpointed the cause. The lightning theory is "possible," Bob Friend, acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, said during a break in the hearing. "I wouldn't say it's probable."

Investigators are still doing tests, he said, and have not yet interviewed the sole survivor, Randy McCloy, who is still recovering after being pulled from the mine in a coma with multiple organ failure.

Last week, McCloy sent a letter to the miners' families describing the hours after the explosion. He said four of the miners' air packs didn't work.

McAteer and Friend told reporters that tests on all the air packs after the blast showed they were operational. They have suggested the miners might not have been trained in proper use of the devices, which provide about an hour's worth of air.

International Coal Group safety official John Stemple Jr. said at the hearing that a pack won't work if the user is breathing too quickly. "You can over-breathe," he said. "You have to slow your pace down."

Relatives rejected the possibility that the miners didn't operate the air packs correctly.

"Did my dad have his own SCSR (self-contained self-rescue device)?" Peggy Cohen, daughter of miner Fred Ware Jr., demanded during her opening statement. "Were there enough supplies located in the mine for these men to build an appropriate barricade?"

Cohen said her family feels her father's loss constantly. "We are having difficulty eating, sleeping and even functioning every day," she said.

For a few minutes, she reminisced tearfully about her father, who drove a 1984 Chevy truck he called "Old Blue" with more than 400,000 miles on it. She described his love of flea markets and auctions.

Then she returned to the inevitable: more questions. "Was this a preventable explosion?" she asked. "Did our dad have to die?

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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