Posted on 01/08/2006 4:53:06 PM PST by Former Military Chick
A US coalminer left a detailed note showing that he and other trapped workers were alive at least 10 hours after an underground explosion, a family member said.
The daughter of 61-year-old Jim Bennett, who was a shuttle car operator in the West Virginia mine, said the note has three or four entries, the first coming on Monday at 11.40am and the last, in words that trailed off the page, at 4.25pm, nearly 10 hours after the blast.
"Each time he documented, you could tell it was getting worse," Ann Merideth told The Associated Press. "Later on down the note he said that it was getting dark. It was getting smoky. They were losing air."
The blast killed one miner immediately and 11 more who were found nearly 42 hours later huddled together behind a plastic curtain erected to keep out deadly carbon monoxide.
The lone survivor found among those corpses, 26-year-old Randal McCloy Jr, remains critically ill in a medically induced coma at a Pittsburgh hospital. Doctors believe he has brain damage from severe oxygen deprivation.
"I often thought about if he had written a note. Well, we got one yesterday. Bless his heart," Merideth said during an interview at a makeshift memorial to her father and two other fallen miners from this tiny coal town.
"He didn't know how much more time he had. But he wanted everybody to know to tell my mom that he loved her," she said. "And he wanted me and my brother to know that he loved us."
Merideth said the note left her with comfort, but also anger that her father could have been alive and lucid for a long enough time to be rescued.
The first rescuers did not go into the mine until 11 hours after the blast, a lag coal company officials said was necessary to clear the mine of high concentrations of poisonous gases.
Merideth said her father "didn't know how much more time he had. But he wanted . . . to tell my mom that he loved her. And he wanted me and my brother to know that he loved us."
I do hope they will be able to keep the remainder of their notes private. While many would like to know, it really should remain amongst the family, imho.
Sad BTTT...
How many of them just didn't have a pen handy?
PING
This is so very sad. People say that the miners didn't really suffer, but they did know that the end was coming and they had to face the hopelessness of that.
all of your post was very well said. Thank you.
I have not heard of any of the notes that blamed anyone...certainly not the men they knew were trying to rescue them. I have no doubt they knew the rescue team was desperately trying to get to them. I hope the daughter who is noted on this thread resolves her anger.
I agree....I just think that these notes were to ease the pain of the loved ones...NOT to be used by news organizations to speculate about everything...
Those poor, poor, families will have so many different emotions to have to work through...
My prayers are will all of them...that God will bring them peace...and that it was a God send that their men were able to communicate at all during their last hours...
Thanks for the ping FMC. I wonder if that note gives them more comfort or unhappiness at being able to see the deterioration?
What about respirators? I thought the reason these guys died was because the rescuers couldn't dig to them in time. I was cut off from the news during this crisis and I had no idea the rescuers were waiting on the surface.
This shows us something we should already know, that these men loved their families more than life. (Why else would they even work there?)
In those terrible last hours they thought of their loved ones and tried to comfort them.
Nobody can tell me that there are no men left in America.
Almighty Lord we beg your mercy and blessing for these men and for their loved ones.
Amen.
Thanks for the ping!
Sad. I know the rescue crews did all they could to get there without risking more lives. It is always tough to leave men in the field. Had to do it once, still don't tell anyone the details.
Amen.
Amen to your prayer.
Prayers for all the miners and their families. This story is indeed a tearjerker.
The whole rescue was very confusing. The media didn't make it any better to watch, because they would keep asking stupid questions, not good ones. They were always trying to point blame on the mining company from the first minute, and they seemed to want to focus on blame rather than on how to get to the miners. Have you read any of the original threads? It was awful.
Here's a link to the long thread. It had tons of info as the tragedy unfolded.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1550633/posts
When you think about it then it does not make any sense that these minors had to die from this. There should have already been pipes laid along the ground(Or drilled through from the surface) as the mine was dug that could have been pumped with oxygen from the outside. I am not sure of what the exact scheme of that would be, but I know that in this day and age- it could be done. It sounds to me like these guys were trapped in a huge area they could have moved around in. I just can't believe that there was nothing there to provide them with air.
I agree, FMC. It's one thing if the family wants to publically speak about the contents of their loved one's notes, but it's quite another for someone else to do that without the family's approval.
Sad BTTT.
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