Residents pay respects to miners
PHILIPPI, W.Va. – Residents of central West Virginia bowed their heads Saturday and remembered 12 miners killed Monday after an underground explosion and prayed for the accident’s sole survivor.
“The community pulls together here,” said miner Matthew Brown, 36, as he walked from the viewing of miner David Lewis, 28. “We’re a strong people.”
As the first viewings began Saturday for the miners killed in the Sago mine accident, residents from a string of towns that loosely circle Buckhannon said they were trying to get through the grieving process. Six funerals were planned for today.
It was still unclear exactly what had caused the mine explosion, as poisonous gases continued to keep investigative teams at bay Saturday. International Coal Group chief executive Ben Hatfield said on Friday that it could be days before the first investigators go in.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration is investigating the blast and the miscommunication from rescue teams that left anxious relatives and friends expecting the 12 missing miners to walk into a church near the mine.
Forty-one hours after the blast, the men were found behind a plastic curtain erected to block deadly carbon monoxide. Only one miner, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, survived.
Federal and state investigators have yet to enter the mine, where additional ventilation holes are being drilled to purge the mine of poisonous gases, a process that may not be completed for a few days.
Although the mine is closed, Hatfield met with about 145 employees Saturday to assure them there will be no layoffs. He said employees would be paid for the whole week, and offered them temporary jobs at ICG’s other mines in the region. The company has operations in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Illinois.
As flags flew at half-staff, many signs in front of businesses in the region had changed Saturday from grief for the dead miners to prayers for McCloy. But most people still expressed a sense of loss.
“This is a mining town,” said Ronnie Holbert, 58, who was a miner for nine years before the mine where he worked closed down. “If you didn’t mine and your father didn’t mine, you knew somebody who mined.”
West Virginia Gov. Joe Menchin spoke quietly with Lewis’ family while inside the Semple & Forman Funeral Home. He left the packed service without talking to the news media that had gathered on a highway outside.
A few miles away, in front of the Philippi courthouse, somebody had driven four white crosses into the ground. Each of the crosses represented one of the miners from the town. Candles and flowers were collecting in a pile in front of the crosses.
Dave Frey, 55, said he didn’t know any of the four Philippi miners who had died in the explosion but that he had come to pay his respects.
“This was just a freak accident,” said Frey, a construction worker. “Most people in West Virginia understand that. It’s not really anyone’s fault.”
Brown, who works at Sago’s sister mine in Philippi, still had flecks of black around his eyes when he entered the viewing for Lewis Saturday afternoon. He said he planned to go to as many of the services as he could before returning to work for a 13-hour shift.
He said his three daughters – ages 13, 12, and 6 – and wife were finding his returning to work after the accident difficult.
“They’re having a hard time with me going back in,” he said. But, he said jobs with health care benefits that pay a good wage are difficult to come by in this mountainous region of north-central West Virginia.
“Besides,” he said. “Coal is in my blood.”