Letter tells of miners’ last moments
BUCKHANNON, W.Va. – Randal McCloy Jr. couldn’t save the 12 friends trapped with him inside the Sago Mine, and he can’t explain to their families why he was the only one to survive. But he had one gift for them, at once painful and precious: the most detailed account yet of what happened after the Jan. 2 explosion.
There was reason to shudder at the memories in his letter to the families: tunnels filled with crippling smoke and fumes, miners banging desperately on steel rods in hopes someone would hear.
There was reason to take comfort: Friends sharing what oxygen they had, praying together, peacefully facing the inevitable. And there was reason for anger: Each miner had an air pack, but at least four of them didn’t work, according to McCloy.
The typed, 2 1/2 -page letter was delivered to the families Wednesday and obtained by the Associated Press.
Reading it was especially emotional for the family of Jerry Groves, with whom McCloy shared his oxygen after Groves’ air pack failed. Groves’ mother, Wanda, collapsed while reading it.
“I would like to thank Mr. McCloy for sharing his oxygen with our brother,” Groves’ sobbing sister Beckie Rogers said as the family gathered in their mother’s Weston living room.
McCloy spokeswoman Aly Goodwin Gregg, who delivered the letter, said neither she nor McCloy will discuss the letter further. McCloy wrote that he hoped his words “will offer some solace to the miners’ families and friends who have endured what no one should ever have to endure.”
The blast killed one miner and spread carbon monoxide that slowly asphyxiated 11 other men 260 feet below ground. Only McCloy survived the 41 hours it took for rescue teams to find them. He was released from a rehabilitation hospital last month.
McCloy didn’t remember the explosion itself. “I do remember that the mine filled quickly with fumes and thick smoke, and that breathing conditions were nearly unbearable,” he wrote.
The air packs the miners had counted on – referred to in the letter as “rescuers” – are intended to give each miner about an hour’s worth of oxygen while they escape or find a pocket of clean air.
“There were not enough rescuers to go around,” McCloy wrote.
Three other men besides Groves were forced to ask their colleagues to share.
After the blast, McCloy said, the miners initially returned to their shuttle car in hopes of escaping along the track, but had to abandon the effort. They then retreated, hung a curtain to keep out the poisonous gases, and tried to signal their location by beating on the mine bolts and plates.
“We found a sledgehammer, and for a long time, we took turns pounding away,” McCloy wrote. “We had to take off the rescuers in order to hammer as hard as we could. This effort caused us to breathe much harder. We never heard a responsive blast or shot from the surface.”
Martin “Junior” Toler, 51, and Tom Anderson, 39, made another last-ditch attempt to find a way out but were quickly turned back by heavy smoke and fumes, McCloy said.
“We were worried and afraid, but we began to accept our fate,” he wrote. “Junior Toler led us all in the Sinners Prayer.”
After someone suggested that they write to loved ones, McCloy wrote a letter to his wife and children and put it in a fellow miner’s lunch box.
McCloy said the air behind the curtain grew worse. He lay as low as possible and tried to take shallow breaths, but became lightheaded.
“Some drifted off into what appeared to be a deep sleep, and one person sitting near me collapsed and fell off his bucket, not moving. It was clear that there was nothing I could do to help him,” McCloy wrote. “The last person I remember speaking to was Jackie Weaver, who reassured me that if it was our time to go, then God’s will would be fulfilled.”
McCloy, 27, left the mine battered and comatose and spent months in the hospital. He suffered brain damage that affects his ability to hold a conversation, but doctors have been amazed by the speed of his recovery.
Though state and federal investigators have reached no official conclusions about the cause of the explosion, ICG officials say they believe it was caused by a lightning bolt that ignited a buildup of naturally occurring methane.
ICG spokesman Matt Barkett said late Thursday that no one from the company would be available until today to address the issue. In a statement earlier in the day, ICG said the air packs, also known as self-contained self-rescue devices, or SCSRs, were tested by federal investigators, “and all appeared to be in working order.”