DRENNEN, W.Va. — Emergency responders were hoping to use an underwater drone Sunday to reach a miner trapped deep inside a flooded West Virginia coal mine, authorities said.
A mining crew hit an unknown pocket of water Saturday about three-quarters of a mile into the Rolling Thunder mine near Drennen, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the state capital of Charleston, Nicholas County Commissioner Garrett Cole said in a Facebook post.
All the other miners on the team were accounted for after the accident was reported to the county emergency management department at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday. It wasn’t clear how extensive the flooding is inside.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said in a statement that the mine flooded after an old mine wall “was compromised,” and that multiple state agencies are involved in the response, which includes pumping water from the flooded section.
Rolling Thunder is one of 11 underground mines operated in West Virginia by Tennessee-based Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. The company also operates four surface mines in the state, as well as three underground and one surface mine in Virginia.
A report prepared in February for Alpha by an engineering consulting firm, Marshall Miller & Associates, said the area had been “extensively explored” by previous mine owners, generating “a significant amount of historical data” that Alpha examined in assessing its potential for producing coal.
The same report says that the Rolling Thunder coal seam runs along and below the drainage of TwentyMile Creek, but said there were “no significant hydrologic concerns” about digging for more coal in the extensively mined property.
