Some of the 12 coal miners who died following an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine left notes behind assuring family members that their final hours trapped underground were not spent in agony.
"The notes said they weren't suffering, they were just going to sleep," said Peggy Cohen, who had been called to a makeshift morgue at a school to identify the body of her father, 59-year-old mining machine operator Fred Ware Jr.
She said the medical examiner told her notes left with several of the bodies all carried a similar message: "Your dad didn't suffer."
Ware was among a dozen miners who were found after 41 hours inside the mine. They were found at the deepest point of the Sago Mine, about 2 1/2 miles from the entrance, behind a fibrous plastic cloth stretched across an area about 20 feet wide to keep out deadly carbon monoxide gas.
The sole survivor, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, remains in critical condition in a coma in a Morgantown hospital today with a collapsed lung, dehydration and other problems.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin said autopsies on the dead should be completed either late tonight or early tomorrow, and his office indicated that if the families want him there, he would attend all the funerals.
Meanwhile, federal and state investigators were at the mine today seeking a cause for Monday's explosion. Coal mine explosions are typically caused by buildups of naturally occurring methane gas or highly combustible coal dust in the air, but what exactly triggered that explosion remains unclear.