Trapped miners gave their oxygen to one of their number, a young father, who survived.
On 2 January 2006, parts of the Sago Mine in West Virginia collapsed, leaving unknown the fate of thirteen miners trapped by the accident. Rescuers did not reach these men until almost two days later, at which time it was discovered twelve of the miners had perished, eleven of suffocation and one from injuries received in theblast.The lone survivor, Randal McCloy, was treated for carbon monoxide poisoning and organ damage. His family elected for him to receive hyperbaric therapy, the same treatment given to scuba divers suffering from the bends: Patients breathe 100 percent oxygen (room air is 21 percent oxygen) in a chamber where the atmospheric pressure is two to three times normal to help the oxygen penetrate tissues it cannot reach under normal conditions. To effect this treatment, McCloy was kept in a medically-induced coma.While this 26-year-old father of two struggled to recover, speculation regarding the possible reasons for his being the only survivor of this mining disaster remained unanswered. One theory asserted the other miners, knowing that all would perish otherwise, shared oxygen from their self-rescuers with McCloy:[The Daily Telegraph, 2006] The miner's father, Randal McCloy Sr, said that he believed 'in his heart' that his son's mostly 50-something colleagues decided during their last, desperate hours to share their dwindling oxygen supply with his son because he was the youngest of the group and had two young children. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2006] Ms. McCloy [Randal McCloy's wife] said she would not be surprised to learn, as friends and family have begun to speculate, that his fellow miners sacrificed some of their oxygen supply to save him when they were trapped underground together following an explosion Monday. 'I figure they thought of Randy as one of their sons and wanted to take care of him,' she said.Final messages in the form of scribbled notes to loved ones were found on some of the miners, but none of their contents (as released to the media) made mention of oxygen being donated to McCloy.Several months after the accident, when Randal McCloy was sufficiently recovered to release a statement, the story he told was the opposite of the one presented above: At least four of the miners' air packs did not function, so McCloy shared his own rescuer with another miner, and the miners trapped with him shared theirs with the other three men whose own devices did not work:The air packs - referred to as 'rescuers' - are intended to give each miner about an hour's worth of oxygen while they escape or find a pocket of clean air. But at least four of the devices did not function, McCloy said. 'There were not enough rescuers to go around,' McCloy said. He said he shared his air pack with miner Jerry Groves, and his co-workers did the same with the three other men whose devices were not functioning. Finally, resigned to their fate, the men recited a 'sinner's prayer,' scrawled farewell notes to their loved ones, and succumbed, some as if drifting off to sleep.The miners did not all share their air packs with Randal McCloy because he was a young father in need of help - Randal and some others shared their own rescuers with four other men because there were not enough working packs to go around.Barbara 'miner difference' Mikkelson
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