How the "miracle" report took off

SAGO, W.Va. — Amid outrage over conflicting reports from the deadly Sago Mine disaster, the mining company's top executive said Wednesday he regretted allowing family members to believe for hours that their loved ones had survived.

A choked-up Ben Hatfield, chief executive of International Coal Group, said company officials mistakenly allowed family jubilation over erroneous reports that the miners were alive "to go on longer than it should have."

"We sincerely regret the manner in which events unfolded," said Hatfield, who blamed "miscommunication" for the stunning and heartbreaking turn of events early Wednesday.

"I don't think that anyone had a clue how much damage was about to be created, and we truly regret that," he said.

Hours later Wednesday night, about 200 people from the towns surrounding the mine gathered for a candlelight vigil.

The one miner who survived, Randal McCloy Jr., 26, was in critical condition in a Morgantown, W.Va., hospital.

Hatfield's remarks provided the first, partial explanation of what happened after rescue teams had reached the miners. National news reports initially told of the seemingly miraculous survival of 12 miners who had been trapped underground for more than 41 hours.

Three hours later, though, the joyous celebrations and the pealing of bells at the Sago Baptist Church abruptly ended as company officials shocked family members and friends with the news that 11 of the 12 miners were dead. The body of a 13th miner had been found earlier Tuesday night.

The grim task of piecing together what happened — and what went wrong — began Wednesday.

The cause of the explosion early Monday that killed the dozen miners is still not known, Hatfield said. The miner whose body was found first was killed by the blast; his body was found several hundred feet from the others.

Mine officials said Wednesday that after the explosion, the 12 surviving miners did what they had been trained to do: They retreated deeper into the mine and hung a curtainlike barrier to keep out toxic gases while they waited for rescuers to find them. Each of the miners in the barricaded area also had a breathing apparatus.

The mining company would not say exactly how they died or how long they survived, citing family privacy.

Beyond that, though, there is confusion about the critical three hours between the rescuers' discovery of the miners and the disclosure to the families of their fate.

Hatfield said rescue teams reported finding 12 miners alive Tuesday at 11:45 p.m. EST. Moments later, the news spread via "stray cellphone conversations," Hatfield said.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who lost an uncle in a 1968 mine disaster and who earlier Tuesday said it would take a miracle to find the miners alive, heard the unexpected news at the Sago Baptist Church.

"I was sitting with families and speaking with family members. There's two rooms in the church, and when one room broke out in euphoria and everyone saying, 'What happened, what happened?' — that's when someone said, 'They found them, they're alive,' " Manchin recalled. "I looked at our communications people and I looked at my security and said, 'Have we had that confirmed? Do we know anything about that?' And they said, 'No.' "

Then there was a stampede to the door and the church bells started ringing. The sense of gloom that had settled over this small mining community suddenly gave way to joy, with men giving each other bear hugs and people shouting, "Praise the Lord."

Bridgette Lusk, whose uncle Martin "Junior" Toler was among the trapped, said her first cousin was a mine foreman at Sago who had called family at the church to report, "They just said they're alive."

After praying for more than two days for a miracle, there was no stopping this miracle, even if it wasn't true. Within minutes — at 11:52 p.m. EST — The Associated Press issued an alert on its news wire, reporting that family members were saying the 12 miners were alive. There was no confirmation of the report from International Coal Group, which, conspicuously, would remain silent for the next three hours. Subsequent news reports would attribute the successful rescue to family members, most of them unnamed.

And The AP quoted the governor as saying, "They told us they have 12 alive."

But even among the celebrations there was confusion.

John Casto, who knew three of the trapped men and who was among those waiting in the church, said a man rushed into the sanctuary and grabbed the microphone. Standing beneath a framed tapestry of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper," the unidentified man said the emergency crews were going to bring the men up to the church to feed them and reunite them with their families.

"It's going to be another Christmas this year," the man said.

Hatfield said Wednesday that taking the miners to the church was never part of the emergency plan, which called for any survivors to immediately be transported to a hospital. "We had no idea what they were being told," he said.

Manchin told the families that he was going back over to the mine to get more information.

Wanda Groves, the mother of trapped miner Jerry Groves, was walking beside Manchin when she stumbled. As the governor helped the struggling woman regain her footing, Darlene Groves, the woman's daughter-in-law, touched the sleeve of the governor's leather jacket and asked him: "Are all 12 men alive?"

Darlene Groves said the governor turned to her and said quietly, "Yes."

Manchin would say later he got "caught up in the euphoria." But what was supposed to have been a personal exchange was overheard, and a private word of encouragement suddenly took the shape of official confirmation from the highest level of state government.

Shortly after midnight, Manchin repeated in a telephone interview with The AP that 12 men had been found alive.

"It is a miracle; there's no other explanation," he said. "They're hunkered down. ... We have some people that are going to need some medical attention."

But Hatfield knew he had a problem. The initial report from the rescue team that the miners were alive was followed, at 12:30 a.m. EST, by news that only one miner, McCloy, had survived. Hatfield then wished for his own miracle, telling reporters during a Wednesday afternoon news conference that he "clinged to the hope that the other 11 might be comatose."

Hatfield said he did not know at that time if the dead could number two or 12. "We didn't believe there was any productive benefit" to giving people inconclusive information. So the misinformation lived on.

A little more than an hour later, at 1:38 a.m., the deaths of 11 miners were confirmed. Still, there was no public statement from the company.

Hatfield, who said he had no idea who spread the erroneous word to relatives at the church, said he contacted the state police at 1 a.m., telling them to notify clergy at Sago Baptist Church to tell waiting families that "initial reports may have been inaccurate." That never happened. By 2:30 a.m., Hatfield said the company had completed a statement that would soon be delivered to unsuspecting family members at the church.

"Rightly or wrongly, we made what we believed to be the best decisions ... while working under extreme stress and physical exhaustion," Hatfield said.

When asked what he would have done differently, if he could, Hatfield said, "I would have personally gone to the church ... to say something may be wrong here."

The miracle in West Virginia officially ended shortly after Hatfield entered the church, shortly after 2:30 a.m. Chaos broke out, with screams and fights. The first word of the miners' deaths came from The AP at 2:57 a.m. Wednesday, saying 11 of 12 miners initially thought to have survived were dead. The report cited family members.

Shortly after 3 a.m., the company confirmed what it had known for almost three hours.

The last of the 12 bodies were taken out of the mine at midmorning Wednesday.

"We was looking for them to come through that door, man," a red-eyed John Casto said Wednesday as he stood beside a funeral-home tent in back of the Sago Baptist Church, where the bells had tolled the "miracle" just hours before. "And it didn't happen that way."