For a few fleeting hours it seemed that a miracle had occurred. Inside Sago Baptist church the families of 13 miners trapped for two days deep under the mountains of West Virginia celebrated the news that 12 were alive with shrieks of joy and prayers of thanks. As the bells rang out the media flashed the good news around the world.
But three hours later hope turned to despair, then mounting anger as a mining official told the families the first announcement had been a ”miscommunication”. In fact, all but one of the men had died while huddled behind a large fabric barricade constructed to try to keep out deadly levels of carbon monoxide gas.
A fight broke out inside the white clapboard church and a mining company official had to be escorted away under police protection after it emerged that mine officials had known within 45 minutes that the original reports might have been false, but had waited to tell the families.
Randal McCloy (27) the only survivor, was in a critical but stable condition on Wednesday night with a collapsed lung, carbon monoxide poisoning and dehydration. In other circumstances the rescue of even one man after being trapped 80m underground for more than 40 hours might have been greeted as a miracle. But it was overshadowed by the dashed hopes of other families who had been keeping a vigil inside the church since an explosion ripped through the Sago mine at 6.30am on Monday.
Late on Tuesday, just before midnight, a message crackled over a speakerphone at the mine’s command post that rescue workers had found the 12 miners alive. The place erupted into euphoria. The bells of the church began to ring and inside there were scenes of jubilation among the 500 or so relatives and friends of the miners, who launched into a rendition of Amazing Grace. ”People were rushing out yelling ‘There’s 12 alive!”’ said Terry Goff, a friend of one of the miners.
John Casto, a relative of a dead miner, told Associated Press that a man came to the church and said squad cars would pick up the miners and bring them to the church, where they would be reunited with their families. The man said ”it would be like another Christmas”, Casto said, choking back tears.
The governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, left the church promising to return with the men. Joe Thornton, deputy secretary for the West Virginia department of public safety, told reporters shortly after midnight that the rescued miners were being examined and would be taken to local hospitals. The news flashed around the world and many newspapers on the US east coast ran headlines proclaiming the miners to be alive.
But 45 minutes later another communication from within the mine crackled across the radio in the command post: 12 men were dead, only one was alive. Ben Hatfield, chief executive of the mine owner, International Coal Group, said there was disbelief as they frantically tried to find out the reality of the situation down the mine.
Hatfield said management had tried to stem the jubilation by getting word to pastors at the church that there were conflicting reports about the number of survivors. But for some reason the message never got through. Instead it was Hatfield who arrived at the church just before 3am. ”He said there was a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived,” said John Groves, whose brother Jerry died.
About a dozen state troopers and a Swat team had to escort him to safety. ”We were thankful the police were there,” the Reverend Wease Day told the Washington Post. Day tried to calm the crowd, but a man shouted: ”Whatever did God do for us?”
On Wednesday afternoon Hatfield said the owners ”sincerely regret” the confusion. ”In the process of being cautious, we allowed the jubilation to go on longer than it should have,” he said choking back tears. The initial report, he said, might have been the result of the frontline rescue workers wearing breathing gear that might have led to a miscommunication with workers nearer the surface. – Guardian Unlimited Â