Team probing W.Va. blast must wait for mine's air to clear

SAGO, W.Va. -- As the victims' families made plans for the first of the funerals, officials worked yesterday to purge Sago Mine of poisonous gases and allow investigators to determine what sparked the blast and how the miners spent their final hours.

Workers began drilling three holes to ventilate the mine. But Ben Hatfield, chief executive of International Coal Group Inc., said it may be days before the first investigators can go in.

''There are so many things we don't know about what went wrong," Hatfield said. ''We don't want to put any more people at risk until we know answers."

The Mine Safety and Health Administration appointed an eight-person team to investigate Monday's blast, which killed one miner immediately and left 12 others trapped more than 2 miles inside. Only one miner was alive when the group was found nearly 42 hours later, huddled behind a plastic curtain erected to keep out deadly carbon monoxide.

Investigators said they are looking into all possibilities, including a theory that lightning ignited naturally-occurring methane gas or coal dust. Even before the blast, those were areas of concern at the mine, which had been cited for violations in 2005 regarding the ventilation plan to control dust and explosive gases.

The accident occurred after the mine had been closed for the holiday weekend; the explosion was believed to have originated in an unused section of the mine.

Specialists on mine safety said gas can build up in a mine after just one day of idled operations, especially in the winter, when the barometric pressure drops. Also, the metal casings of abandoned natural gas wells above a mine can conduct an electrical current into the ground.

''If this is in fact a strike of lightning onto a well, gas or oil, that sits above an abandoned section of the workings, that well should have had a substantial barrier to avoid this," said David McAteer, who oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration during the Clinton administration.

''We've had lightning strikes cause accidents in mines, and they're very disconcerting because they do just what this did. They go down and blow the seals out," he said.

A federal report in 2001 documented at least seven instances in the 1990s of lightning igniting methane or coal dust; three occurred in one mine in Alabama.

The recollections of the sole survivor of Monday's blast could prove crucial to the investigation. But Randal McCloy Jr., 26, was believed to have brain damage from oxygen deprivation and remained in a medically induced coma yesterday at the Pittsburgh hospital where he was moved a day earlier to receive intensive oxygen treatments.

The probe will also look at the miscommunication from rescuers inside the mine that led anxious relatives to believe for three hours that the miners had miraculously survived. In other developments, autopsies were completed and the bodies of the miners were returned to the families. State law prohibits the public release of autopsy results.

The first funerals for the miners were being scheduled, with at least three services planned for tomorrow.