Body of missing coal miner found in flooded West Virginia mine, governor says | West Virginia
Crews found the body of a coal miner missing since a mine in West Virginia flooded on Saturday, the state’s governor, Patrick Morrisey, said Thursday.
Crews found the body at Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc.’s Rolling Thunder Mine near Belva, about 50 miles east of the state capital, Charleston.
A mining crew hit an unknown body of water three-quarters of the way into the mine last Saturday, leaving it flooded after an old mine wall was “compromised”, Morrisey said. More than a dozen miners were declared dead after the accident was reported.
The death was the third at an Alpha facility in West Virginia this year. Both other incidents occurred in nearby Raleigh County: In August, an elevator being tested at Alpha subsidiary Marfork Coal’s processing plant struck a miner on a first-floor platform, and in February a coal seam fell on a contractor at Alpha’s Black Eagle underground operation, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
To speed up the search process, holes were drilled in the mine and diving teams searched for potential areas where air pockets could be found in the water. The National Cave Rescue Commission provided surplus army telephones attached to cables that could travel long distances to provide better underground communications.
Rolling Thunder, Tennessee-based Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. It is one of 11 underground mines operated by West Virginia. The company also operates four surface mines in the state, three underground and one surface mine in Virginia.
The abandoned mine next to Rolling Thunder was in operation in the 1930s and 1940s, Morrisey said.
A report prepared for Alpha in February by engineering consulting firm Marshall Miller & Associates said the area had been “extensively surveyed” by previous mine owners and obtained “a significant amount of historical data” that Alpha examined in assessing its coal-producing potential.
The same report notes that the Rolling Thunder coal seam is advancing along and below the drainage of Twentymile Creek, but that there are no “significant hydrological concerns” affecting mining.
