Miner's notes comfort families

BUCKHANNON, West Virginia - "It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you." Martin Toler managed to scrawl those words in a last message to his family as he lay dying in a West Virginia coal mine this week, one of 12 miners who perished after an explosion on Monday.

"Tell all I see them on the other side," he wrote.

The note, one of several left by the doomed miners, offered comfort to relatives whose hopes had been dashed on Wednesday after hearing false reports three hours earlier that just one of 13 trapped miners had died.

Instead, only one survived nearly 42 hours underground following the blast. That miner, Randal McCloy, was being kept in a medically induced coma today, although his wife said he was responding to her and their two children.

McCloy was transferred yesterday to Pittsburgh's Allegheny General Hospital for treatment to reduce carbon monoxide levels that doctors fear may have damaged his brain.

His wife Anna told ABC's Good Morning America her husband became excited when his two small children visited him. "He knows when I'm there, because when I'm there he gets excited and he's trying to lift his eyelids and look at me," she said.

Dr Richard Shannon told a news conference it was not uncommon for patients under sedation like McCloy to show signs such as flickering eyes and biting down on a breathing tube as the effects of medication vary.

"It's our goal to keep him in this state of medically induced coma," Shannon told a news conference.

McCloy's mother, Tambra Flint, told ABC television she thought some of the older miners who died might have shared their oxygen supplies with him to save the younger man.

Shannon said there was some improvement in McCloy's lung and cardiac functions and his kidneys had stabilised, but his brain showed signs of injury. He said it was too soon to tell the extent of the damage or if it would be permanent.

West Virginia's worst mining disaster since 1968 was made more poignant by initial reports saying 12 of the men had survived, prompting three hours of jubilation that quickly turned to despair when family members learned the truth.

Mine authorities have said several notes were found with the victims, but only Toler's had so far been made public.

"I think he wanted to set our minds at ease, that he didn't suffer, and I just think that God gave him peace at the end," his nephew Randy Toler told CNN.

Randy Toler said other notes were likely written with his uncle's pen. Martin Toler, 51, was a section foreman with 32 years' mining experience.

"Coal miners typically don't carry ink pens, just the section boss does. .. and I'm sure he would have directed them to do that. I'm sure he probably told them that it didn't look good and they needed to make peace with their maker." There has been no explanation for the explosion on Monday at the Sago Mine, which employs about 145 miners and produces about 800,000 tonnes of coal annually. The central West Virginia mine is owned by International Coal Group Inc.

Investigators were looking into whether it might be linked to a lightning strike.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration had issued 50 citations to the Sago mine, including some for accumulation of combustible materials such as coal dust and loose coal.

- REUTERS