Anger As Mine Rescue Hopes Are Dashed

There were angry scenes in West Virginia today after families learned that reports of the survival of 12 miners trapped in a coal mine were incorrect and only one man was alive.

Families learned of the deaths from mine officials more than three hours after state governor Joe Manchin said he had been told 12 of the miners survived the disaster. Mr Manchin described the confusion over the number of deaths as "heart-wrenching" and said it was the wrong time to blame anyone for the earlier miscommunication that only one of the miners had died.

Ben Hatfield, the chief executive officer of the International Coal Group that owns the mine, said the sole survivor of the disaster, Randal McCloy Jr, had been taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Chaos and fighting broke out when it emerged that earlier reports had raised false hopes for relatives of the miners waiting for news at the nearby Sago Baptist church. John Groves, whose brother Jerry Groves was one of the trapped miners, said Mr Hatfield had told them that "there had been a lack of communication, that what we were told was wrong and that only one survived".

"The initial report from the rescue team to the command centre indicated multiple survivors," Mr Hatfield said during a news conference. "That information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command centre. It quickly got out of control." Mr Hatfield said the company had waited to correct the information until it knew more about the rescue.

One family member said a mine foreman had telephoned relatives, saying the miners had been found alive. The news prompted scenes of jubilation: bells rang out at the church and some relatives ran out of the building screaming in delight. One relative shouted: "They're alive! They're alive!" A group of several hundred relatives broke into a chorus of the hymn How Great Thou Art.

Hopes had been fading of finding anyone alive after mine officials revealed yesterday that carbon monoxide levels were more than three times over the safe levels. All of the initial attempts to find signs of life by pushing cameras through holes drilled from the surface and from a robotic device had been unsuccessful. It was thought the carbon monoxide had built up as a by-product of the unexplained explosion. Most explosions in coal mines are caused by a build up of methane gas.