Bodies of 2 Miners Who Died in Fire Found

By Lawrence Messina

Rescuers on Saturday found the bodies of two miners who disappeared after a conveyor belt caught fire deep inside a coal mine, bringing to 14 the number of West Virginia miners killed on the job in less than a month.

The bodies were found in an area of the mine where rescue teams had been battling the intense blaze for more than 40 hours. Rescuers could not enter that portion of the mine until the flames had been mostly extinguished and the tunnels cooled down.

“We have found the two miners we were looking for,” said Doug Conaway, director of the state Office of Miners’ Health Training and Safety. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a positive outcome.”

The two miners became separated Thursday evening as their 12- member crew tried to escape a conveyor belt fire at Aracoma Coal’s Alma No. 1 mine in Melville, about 60 miles southwest of Charleston. The rest of the crew and nine other miners working in a different section of the mine escaped unharmed.

Gov. Joe Manchin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., informed families of the deaths at a church before announcing them publicly, along with Don Blankenship, chairman of Aracoma’s owner, Massey Energy.

“We have two brave miners that have perished,” the governor told reporters.

Conaway said it appeared the two miners made a “valiant effort” to escape but were blocked by high temperatures and thick smoke.

Earlier this month, 12 miners died as a result of an explosion Jan. 2 at the Sago Mine, 180 miles away in the northern part of the state. The sole survivor of that accident remained hospitalized in a light coma Saturday.

The governor pledged to introduce legislation Monday dealing with rapid responses in emergencies, electronic tracking technology and reserve oxygen stations for miners. He planned to travel to Washington on Tuesday to discuss the proposals with the state’s congressional delegation.

“These two men who perished in this mine, the 12 men who perished in the Sago Mine, I can only say to each of those families . . . that they have not died in vain,” Manchin said.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said Congress must give the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration the tools to operate effectively and may have to increase its budget.

“It’s unfortunate that every coal mine health and safety law on the books is written with the blood of coal miners,” he said.

The federal Mine Health and Safety Act was written a year after a 1968 explosion in Farmington that killed 78 miners, including Manchin’s uncle.

Rescue workers on the surface of the Aracoma mine got no response Saturday morning when they drilled a 200-foot hole into a mine shaft in an effort to contact the missing miners. Workers pounded on a steel drill bit but heard nothing from below, and a camera and a microphone lowered into the hole detected no sign of them.

The victims were identified as Don I. Bragg, 33, and Ellery Hatfield, 47. Both were husbands and fathers with more than a decade of mining experience and had worked in the Alma mine for five years.

“It’s just rough. He’s really going to be missed,” said Kevin Walls, a nephew of Hatfield. “He was just a good man. He would do anything to help anybody.”

The two men had been equipped with oxygen canisters that typically produce about an hour’s worth of air.

Jimmy Marcum, a 54-year-old retired miner from Delbarton, said better equipment is needed to protect miners. “I mean, they can send a man to the moon but they can’t make a [oxygen canister] that will last at least 16 hours. . . . That’s what they need to do,” he said.