Sago: one man came out of the mountain

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. — At 6:30 a.m. on January 2, 2006, an explosion tore through the Sago Mine in Upshur County. Thirteen men had just gone underground to do maintenance on the first shift back after a holiday shutdown.

Investigators later concluded that lightning was the probable ignition source: a strike near the mine traveled down a conductor into the mine and found methane in a sealed area. Twelve of the thirteen miners were found behind a barricade built in a crosscut. Randal McCloy Jr., then 26, was the only one brought out alive, and the one who had to be told, later, the names of the men who had carried him out of the dark.

The rescue took forty-one hours. What went wrong at the surface in those hours became its own scandal: families were told during a church service that twelve miners were alive, bells rang, and then three hours later that twelve had died. The wrong information came from a miscommunication between rescue teams and was allowed to reach grieving families who had been awake for two days.

The agency changed how it handles that. A single point of contact, verified information and no announcement until the number is confirmed are now standard practice, and the failure at Sago is the reason the rule exists.

Twelve men died. One was left with severe brain injury. Five months later the MINER Act was signed into law, and nearly every requirement in it — post-accident communication, tracking, refuge alternatives, faster rescue response, higher penalties, a hard 15-minute reporting clock — traces back to a mine in Upshur County and to the second fire that same month at Aracoma.

The story of Sago also has a plainer lesson that training can carry. Barricading keeps a crew alive. It does not bring anyone faster. The men at Sago did what they had been trained to do, and most of them still died waiting.