Two trapped West Virginia coal miners found dead

By Jacque O’Bryant

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (Reuters) – Two miners trapped in
a coal mine fire in West Virginia have been found dead,
officials said on Saturday.

“We found the two miners that we were looking for for the
past 40-some hours. … Unfortunately, we don’t have a positive
outcome,” said Doug Conaway, West Virginia’s mine safety chief.

Rescue crews were unable to get to the two men in time
because of the heat of the fire, said Jesse Cole of the federal
Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA.

The accident was the second this month at a West Virginia
coal mine to claim the lives of miners. Three weeks ago, 12 men
were killed at the Sago mine.

Rescuers had been searching for almost two days at the
Aracoma Mine in Melville, West Virginia, where a fire broke out
late on Thursday afternoon. Nineteen miners escaped the fire,
which mine officials finally contained on Saturday.

The blaze had resisted firefighting efforts and spread from
mine equipment into the coal seam itself, further complicating
efforts hampered by thick smoke and roof collapses.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said in a televised news
conference the two missing men had begun work at the Aracoma
Mine at the same time five years ago.

He identified them as Don Bragg, 33, a married father of
two from Accoville, West Virginia, and Ellery “Elvis” Hatfield,
47, a married father of four from Simon, West Virginia.

The mine is owned by Aracoma Coal Co., a subsidiary of
Richmond, Virginia-based Massey Energy Co., according to a MSHA
database. Massey’s Web site says it is the fourth-largest U.S.
coal company by revenue.

Widows from the Sago tragedy had come to the Aracoma Mine
to lend their support. Manchin said Sago would have been on the
minds of the Aracoma miners and said he planned to make a
statement involved “bold steps” about mine safety after the
Aracoma situation was resolved.

“I am committed. … My goal is not to have one accident
and one fatality,” Manchin said. “I just think we need a little
bit more, I’m going to say a lot more, of a direction, to make
that happen.”

“No family should have to go through what we’ve been going
through,” he said.

The only survivor of the Sago blast, 26-year-old Randal
McCloy, has been hospitalized since, having survived nearly 42
hours underground following the blast.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Randall
Mikkelsen in Washington)