EXPLOSION WEST VIRGINIA MINE (Vidoe)

Updates will follow.

25 Dead at West Virginia Mine

From CNN:

The death toll from the massive explosion at a sprawling coal mine in West Virginia rose to 25 early Tuesday, making it the deadliest U.S. mining disaster in 25 years.

Crews halted their efforts to reach four miners still unaccounted for at the Upper Big Branch Mine following the blast Monday afternoon.

Concentrations of methane and carbon monoxide inside the mine made it a safety risk for crews to proceed, said Kevin Stricklin of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration at a 2 a.m. briefing to reporters.

Officials planned to drill bore holes from the surface 1,200 feet into the mines to help ventilate it and to collect samples. However, they will first have to use bulldozers to clear a path to reach the part of the mine where they can drill.

Stricklin said he did not know how long the process would take.

"I think it's a dire situation but I do think that it is a rescue operation and it will be that way until we confirm that these four additional people are not living," he said. "I mean, there are miracles that go on."

"Basically all we have left," Stricklin said, "is hope."

Seven bodies have been brought out and identified. Among them were three members of the same family: an uncle and two nephews, said West Virginia's Gov. Joe Manchin.

Eighteen other bodies remained inside the mine, and four miners are missing, Manchin said.

Authorities do not yet have a cause. But the mine has a troubled safety record, with three other deaths in the past 12 years, federal records show.

Monday's explosion was the deadliest mining incident in the United States since 1984, when 27 people were killed in a fire at the Emery Mining Corp.'s mine in Orangeville, Utah.

The nation's single deadliest mining disaster was in 1907, when 362 people were killed in a mine explosion near Monongah, West Virginia.

By early Tuesday, nine rescue teams had arrived on-site. Their goal was to race toward the mine's internal rescue chambers where miners are trained to seek refuge after an accident. However, the build up of methane and carbon monoxide forced their withdrawal.

Such airtight chambers -- put in place following several deadly mining accidents in 2006 -- are stocked with enough food and water to enable workers to survive for four days.

Crews noticed that a number of SCSR breathing devices had been taken from storage areas inside the mine.

This, Stricklin said, gave officials hope that some of the miners who survived the initial explosion may have taken them to breathe easier as they made their way to the chambers.

He could not say how many such devices were taken.

SCSR -- or self-contained self-rescue -- devices are portable oxygen sources that help provide breathable air.

But even as rescuers hoped to reach the chambers, the concentrations of methane and carbon monoxide that crews detected "were to the point that they were risking their own lives," Stricklin said.
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