Posted on 04/09/2010 5:53:22 AM PDT by mmanager
MONTCOAL, W.Va. -- Rescue teams had to turn back early today in their third attempt to find four missing miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, after they encountered a large amount of smoke from a fire near the mine's longwall section.
The teams found one refuge chamber in the mine that had not been used, but could not reach a second chamber. They will not be able to get to the second refuge chamber within 96 hours of Monday's explosion - the amount of time the chambers are supposed to keep people alive. That would be about 3 p.m. today.
"It does not look like we'll physically be able to get there based on the smoke we found this morning," said Kevin Stricklin, a coal administrator for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at wvgazette.com ...
This explosion unbelievable. There was a trolley man-trip 1,000 feet into the mine with seven miners in the man-trip and when the explosion happened (5 miles into the mine) it blew the man-trip OUT of the portal of the mine. The miners were still in the man-trip. These are the bodies that you hear that have been "recovered". The man-trip hit a pickup truck that was sitting outside of the mine.
This is so sad. Those poor families. May God help them during this horrible time.
From this, sounds like the other four would have been instantly killed by the blast.
I don’t know squat about mining, but it seems to me these rescue chambers should have exterior markers directly above them, to provide immediate drilling locations. This would enable fairly quick lowering of cameras through a tiny channel to see if a particular chamber is occupied, and if so, to lower tubes providing oxygen and liquid nutrition to sustain the occupants until more extensive drilling or excavating can actually get the survivors out. There’s not much point in having rescue chambers which can’t be reached at all within the length of time they’re able to sustain people.
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