Search underway for coal miner trapped inside flooded mine in West Virginia

A massive search operation is underway in West Virginia, where officials say crews are “working around the clock” and continuing “aggressive” efforts to locate a missing coal miner who became trapped in a flooded coal mine on Saturday afternoon.

“There is nothing that we would spare to try to save the life of the miner,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey told reporters on Monday.

The miner is the foreman of a 17-person team that struck a pocket of water inside of south-central West Virginia’s Rolling Thunder Mine, causing water to rush into the complex, said Nicholas County Commissioner Garret Cole, citing information from the local emergency management and homeland security agency as well as reporting by CBS News affiliate WOWK. Rolling Thunder Mine is in Nicholas County.

All of the other miners were accounted for in the aftermath of the flood, Cole said on Facebook late Sunday. Officials believe the foreman helped the team escape the flooding and that he is about three-quarters of a mile into the mine. 

Multiple local, state and federal agencies were involved in the search, in addition to specialized mining, cave diving and drilling crews attempting to pump water out of the mine, Cole said. By 8:45 p.m. local time Sunday, dive teams had entered the mine for a third time.

“From reporting from homeland security and media, it is amazing to see the mobilization of these many agencies getting to work so quickly and working around the clock in order to move as quickly, and safely as humanly possible,” he said.

Gov. Morrisey also acknowledged the search on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

“We’ve had a mining accident, and we have teams down looking for a missing miner,” Morrisey told Brennan on Sunday. “We’re doing everything we can to locate that person.”

He said in a statement that “a section of the mine operation flooded after an old mine wall was compromised.” 

In an update Monday, Nicholas County Commissioner Cole said the governor said there had been concerns about removing water while dive crews are simultaneously deployed, so crews are now trying to remove the water as fast as possible.

Cole said that coal seams inside the mine have “created air pockets in the ‘peaks’ of the mine,” and that officials hope the miner was able to find them.

“It was stated to me that the air and water is approximately 52-54 degrees, which means the miner would be less likely to suffer hypothermia, but would more be tasked in trying to become dry and keep in an open air pocket of the mine,” Cole said.

The commissioner called the emergency response “a learning experience” for him, in part because of the challenges the mine’s terrain presents to search and rescue crews, and the fact that “it takes so much time to safely and properly” reenter it.

“This is a waiting game, in a most unfortunate way,” Cole said.