Search for trapped worker inside a West Virginia coal mine is a rescue operation, governor says

Crews desperately continued removing massive amounts of water in an effort to locate a trapped worker inside a flooded coal mine in West Virginia as the work entered a fifth day Wednesday.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the efforts by crews about three-fourths of a mile into the Rolling Thunder Mine remained a rescue operation. Machines were pumping out water at a rate of 6,000 gallons (22,712 liters) per minute, he said. That’s enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in under two hours.

“I think people are doing everything imaginable,” Morrisey said. “There’s no quit in anyone here.”

A mining crew hit an unknown pocket of water Saturday about three-quarters of a mile into the mine near Belva, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the state capital of Charleston. The mine flooded after an old mine wall “was compromised,” and multiple state agencies were involved in the response, Morrisey said.

Other miners were accounted for after the accident was reported. Morrisey said he had no estimate on the number of crews working on the rescue effort inside the mine, but “obviously there are a lot of machines pulling the water out.”

“There’s a lot of water that’s been drained, but there’s also a massive amount in there that still needs to be drained,” he said.

In addition, holes have been drilled in the mine, and dive teams were on site, the governor said. The National Cave Rescue Commission has provided surplus Army phones attached to wires that can travel great distances to enable for better underground communication.

Rolling Thunder is one of 11 underground mines operated in West Virginia by Tennessee-based Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. The company also operates four surface mines in the state, as well as three underground and one surface mine in Virginia.

Morrisey said the abandoned mine next to Rolling Thunder had been worked on in the 1930s and 1940s.

A report prepared in February for Alpha by an engineering consulting firm, Marshall Miller & Associates, said the area had been “extensively explored” by previous mine owners, generating “a significant amount of historical data” that Alpha examined in assessing its potential for producing coal.

The same report says that the Rolling Thunder coal seam runs along and below the drainage of TwentyMile Creek, but said there were “no significant hydrologic concerns” about digging for more coal in the extensively mined property.

The region is known both for its coal seams and tourism. The nearby Gauley River is popular for its fall whitewater rafting season, and the picturesque New River Gorge National Park to the south is the nation’s newest national park.

The nearest business to the mine in the rural, sparsely populated area is a convenience store about 15 minutes from the winding road leading to the mine. Two businesses about 30 minutes away have supplied food to the rescue crews, and Nicholas County Commissioner Garrett Cole said the mine company also brought in a food truck.

“Miners are part of the family,” Morrisey said. “They’ve contributed so much to West Virginia. This is part of the fabric of our state. When times are tough, people step up and deliver. I think that’s what’s happening here.”

Cole reminded worried residents of a 1968 accident in the same county in which miners working for Gauley Coal and Coke at Hominy Falls accidentally tunneled into an unmapped abandoned mine nearby, flooding their operation. Four men died, but 15 miners were brought to the surface after five days and six others further into the mine were rescued after 10 days.

In 2002 in southwestern Pennsylvania, nine miners were rescued after spending more than three days trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine.

“Miracles CAN Happen – Have Faith!” Cole wrote on Facebook.

Four of the six reported deaths at U.S. coal mines this year have occurred in West Virginia. One was at Alpha Metallurgical’s Black Eagle operation in nearby Raleigh County in February. A contractor was killed when a piece of a coal seam fell on him, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.