Body of missing coal miner found in flooded West Virginia mine, governor says | West Virginia
Crews have found the body of the coal miner missing since a West Virginia mine flooded Saturday, state Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Thursday.
Crews found the body inside Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc’s Rolling Thunder mine near Belva, about 50 miles east of the state capital of Charleston.
A mining crew had struck an unknown pocket of water about three-quarters of a mile from the mine last Saturday, which was flooded after an old mine wall “became compromised,” Morrisey said. More than a dozen other miners were found after the accident was reported.
The death is the third at an Alpha facility in West Virginia this year. The other two occurred in neighboring Raleigh County: An elevator being tested struck a miner on a first-floor platform in August at Alpha subsidiary Marfork Coal’s processing plant, and a seam of coal fell on a contractor in February at Alpha’s Black Eagle underground operation, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Holes were drilled into the mine to try to speed up the search process and dive teams explored potential areas in the water where air pockets might exist. The National Cave Rescue Commission provided surplus military telephones connected to wires that could travel great distances to allow for better underground communication.
Rolling Thunder is one of 11 underground mines operated in West Virginia by Tennessee-based Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. The company also operates four surface mines in the state, as well as three underground mines and one surface mine in Virginia.
Morrisey said the abandoned mine next to Rolling Thunder was active in the 1930s and 1940s.
A report prepared in February for Alpha by an engineering consulting firm, Marshall Miller & Associates, said the area had been “extensively explored” by previous mine owners, generating “a significant amount of historical data” that Alpha reviewed to assess its coal production potential.
The same report says the Rolling Thunder coal seam extends along and below the Twentymile Creek drainage, but says there are “no significant hydrological concerns” affecting mining.
