Rescue efforts are continuing at a coal mine in central West Virginia where 13 miners are trapped despite a warning about high levels of carbon monoxide at the International Coal Group mine.
Friends and family of the trapped miners gather at the Sago Baptist Church in Tallmansville, West Virginia
Air quality tests showed more than three times the safe limit of carbon monoxide, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive of Ashland, Kentucky-based International Coal Group Inc., which own the Sago mine in central West Virginia.
"We are very discouraged by the results of this test," Hatfield told a news briefing.
He said a camera dropped into a part of the mine about 250 feet below ground and almost 2 miles into the mine showed no survivors, but also no sign of substantial explosion damage.
International Coal CEO Ben Hatfield
"While we're very disappointed by the information we have received thus far, we remain determined to continue the search so long as there is hope, and hope remains," Hatfield said.
The next step was to deploy a robot to search farther inside the mine to search for the miners trapped since a blast at about 6:30 a.m. (1130 GMT) on Monday almost 2 miles from the mine entrance.
Hatfield, who spoke to reporters after briefing relatives of the miners gathered in a church, said there was hope that the miners would be in another location in the mine.
"All we know is that there was an explosion ... We do not know what the fuel source was," he said.
The incident came four years after nine Pennsylvania coal miners were rescued in 2002 following a 77-hour ordeal in a flooded mine shaft 240 feet underground.
Thirteen people were killed in a December 2001 coal mining explosion in Brookwood, Alabama. In 1968, an explosion at a Farmington, West Virginia, mine, caused 78 deaths.