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BUCKHANNON, WV - A memorial service is planned for this afternoon to honor the 12 miners who lost their lives in the Sago Mine accident earlier this month. The service will be held at 2:00 pm Sunday at the Chapel on the West Virginia Wesleyan Campus in Buckhannon. The chapel doors will open at 12:30 p.m. Officials say the chapel itself can hold about 1,800 people and the city is estimating 3,000 will attend. After the chapel fills, others will be seated in the school's gym. Governor Joe Manchin and Senators Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller also plan to attend....

(KDKA/AP) MORGANTOWN Doctors today delivered some discouraging news about the sole survivor from the tragic accident at the sago mine in West Virginia. They say Randal McCloy Jr. did suffer some brain damage from his 42 hours being trapped in the Sago Mine. From brain scans, the carbon monoxide seems to have injured the cable system deep in the brain, called the white matter. KDKA’s Medical Correspondent Dr. Maria Simbra says this area connects brain cells together. The coating of these nerves has been damaged. Dr. Simbra says the nerve coating are like the outside of an electric cord. If...

I haven't seen much discussion of it in the blogosphere, but there are 13 coal miners trapped under 260 feet of dirt right now in West Virginia. It's worthy of discussion here because, once upon a time, these guys were the bread and butter of the Democratic Party -- industrial workers doing hard labor to support their families. Now, they're just as likely to vote Republicans on social issues as they are Democrats on pocketbook issues. But none of that really matters now. What matters now is that air quality tests are indicating very high levels of carbon monoxide in...

"Notes left by some of the miners suggested they may have succumbed to carbon-monoxide poisoning - and died peacefully in their sleep. The father of sole survivor Randal McCloy, 26, told the Associated Press that though he has no evidence, he believes his son survived because the other miners shared the last of their oxygen with him. He believes they did so because McCloy was the youngest and has two small children."

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...

PITTSBURGH — The critically injured sole survivor of the West Virginia coal mine explosion showed dramatic improvement Saturday and was stable enough that he was flown back to a hospital closer to his home, doctors said. Randal McCloy Jr. has been in a medically induced coma to allow his brain time to heal, but when the medication is eased, his eyes flicker and he bites down on his breathing tube, showing he is "awake underneath our coma," said Dr. Richard Shannon of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. "We think that he is clinically stable," Shannon said Saturday afternoon. "He is...

SAGO, W. Va. - It is perhaps the most heartbreaking question raised by a heartbreaking accident: Did 12 miners die deep inside the Sago Mine because instead of trying to walk to safety after an explosion, they went by the book and waited for help that took too long to arrive? They apparently had enough oxygen in their respirators to last an hour or more and no wall of debris blocked their escape, mine company officials said. They could not have known it, but less than 2,000 feet away was breathable air. Cut off from communications with the outside, surrounded...

Phelps and his gang are at it again. This time at the funerals of the WV miners.

BUCKHANNON, W. Va., Jan 5 (Reuters) - The sole survivor of a mine disaster that killed 12 men lay in a coma on Thursday as residents of the tight-knit West Virginia community struggled to understand the latest tragedy in the history of this dangerous profession. But doctors feared that Randal McCloy, the only survivor among 13 miners trapped underground for 42 hours after an explosion on Monday morning at the Sago mine in Tallmansville, could suffer some brain damage as a result of his ordeal. Though mining disasters are nothing new, this one was made more poignant by the fact...

WASHINGTON Democrats called for congressional hearings into mine safety and regulation enforcement after an explosion and collapse in West Virginia killed 12 miners and left another critically injured. -Snip- Under Bush, the Mine Safety and Health Administration has worked more closely with mine owners than under previous presidents, according to union officials. The government has formed formal "partnerships" between companies and agency officials and is shying away from imposing heavy fines and sanctions, said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. Workers at Sago Mine do not belong to a union. "They've gone from being an...

NEW YORK As newspapers conduct damage control after early Wednesday's error, in which most wrongly reported that 12 trapped miners had been rescued in West Virginia, many editors are defending their mistake by saying they were misled by various sources, including the state's governor. Yet, even after extensive follow-up coverage today, serious questions about the sourcing, and its use, remain. "AP was reporting accurately the information that we were provided by credible sources -- family members and the governor," AP managing editor Mike Silverman has said. "The mistake was not ours, it was the authorities at the scene," Leonard Downie...

I need links to that church that protested soldier's funerals. They are comming to WV to protest niner's funerals. I wnt to get it to a radio talk show before 10 AM. Thanks, Roccus

SNIPHow one crucial detail could have spun 180 degrees from the truth may never be adequately explained. Like a twisted game of telephone, the message appears to have mutated as it bounced over radio waves inside the mine to an outside base, and then by landline to the command center. There, someone called family members at a local church. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin joined in the jubilation. The media picked up the "miracle" story and spread it around the world. SNIPThe correction came too late for many newspapers, which had sent their pages to press hours earlier -- just...

Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2006 10:00 p.m. EST President Bush Blamed for Mine Disaster Less than 24-hours after 12 of the 13 workers trapped by a West Virginia mine explosion were found dead, critics were already politicizing the disaster, with at least one mine safety expert blaming President Bush. "This mine should have been closed," former director of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy, Jack Spadaro, told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" Wednesday night. "There were too many serious [safety] violations and the record is very clear," he added. Asked why the allegedly unsafe mine continued to operate, Spadaro...

Lost in all the uproar and commotion concerning the false reports about 12 of the 13 West Virginia Miners being alive is the sad story of what went on until they learned that unlike previously reported, only one miner had survived. Read More... Craig DeLuz Visit The Home of Uncommon Sense... www.craigdeluz.com

TALLMANSVILLE, United States (AFP) - Relatives of 13 coal miners trapped for nearly two days underground reacted in anger and sorrow after hearing that only one had survived, and not 12, as had erroneously been announced earlier. Families keeping vigil at a church had broken into hymns when they heard that the 12 men had survived. Three hours later, their jubilation turned into grief when they were told the miners were dead. "The initial report from the rescue teams from the command center indicated multiple survivors, but that information proved to be a miscommunication," International Coal Group (ICG) president and...

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - Rescuers trying to reach 13 trapped miners punched a hole into the mine early Tuesday, but a company executive said he was "very discouraged" by air quality tests. Carbon monoxide levels measured 1,300 parts per million, exceeding the 400 parts per million maximum safe level, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer of mine owner International Coal Group Inc. "We are very discouraged by the results of this test," Hatfield said. Still, Hatfield said the trapped miners could still be alive. "They could be in another location or they could be barricaded somewhere," Hatfield told reporters. The test...

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. Jan 2, 2006 — A coal mine explosion that may have been sparked by lightning trapped 13 miners underground Monday, officials said. The mine had been idle over the holiday and the explosion occurred as the first shift of miners entered to resume production, said Lara Ramsburg, spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin. "As they were heading in, the car in the back either heard or felt some type of explosion. They headed back out. The first car never made it back out," she said. Four co-workers attempted to reach the missing miners, but they "came to a wall"...

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. - An underground explosion at an Upshur County coal mine trapped 13 miners, a county emergency official said Monday.

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. — One body was found Tuesday night and company officials held out hope that 12 other miners trapped 260 feet underground in a West Virginia coal mine were still alive. "We do know where they have gone," said Ben Hatfield, chief executive officer for International Coal Group Inc., the mine's owner. "We are still operating in rescue mode and are looking for survivors." The unidentified body was found about 700 feet from a mine car, and it appeared the employee was working on a beltline, which brings coal out of the mine, Hatfield said. Red Cross volunteer Tamila...