First it was toxic gas. Now it’s fire.
For more than three days, rescue teams in Raleigh County, W.Va., have been scrambling to get into the Upper Big Branch Mine, site of Monday’s explosion, in search of four miners still unaccounted for. As the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports, they’re having little luck.
Rescue teams were pulled from the mine again this morning, after being sent back in not long after midnight in a third desperate attempt to find the four miners still unaccounted for after Monday’s horrific explosion that killed 25 workers and injured two others.
Teams encountered smoke after they entered a four-tunnel section of the mine that they had not been into during their previous two efforts earlier this week. The smoke, officials said, is an indication of fire somewhere — and that prompted them to pull the rescue teams again …
“We didn’t expect there to be smoke from a fire,” said MSHA’s Kevin Stricklin. “That changed what we’re doing.”
The 25 miners known to be dead were working in a different section of the mine than the four missing workers, who were deeper into the mountain. The odds are dwindling, but there’s still hope that the four miners made their way into one of several emergency refuge shelters, which Congress mandated as a safety measure after a 2006 explosion at West Virginia’s Sago mine killed 12 workers. Those shelters contain enough food, water and oxygen to last at least 96 hours.