I was sitting at my computer getting caught up on emails after having been away for the holidays when a wire crossed about 13 miners who were trapped deep below in a coal mine in West Virginia. That was at about 11am. By two o’clock I was headed to my apartment to gather some clothes and rent a car for the 4-1/2 hour trip to Buckhannon, WV.
When I was younger my family used to go to there during the summer. My mom’s boss had a farm there and he’d invite us out for a week each summer. It’s a really beautiful area with lush rolling hills. I loved going there and now had to go back for what would end up being a tragic and heartwrenching event.
Reporter Kimberly Osias and I arrived around 10 pm that night. We went straight to the mine site to check out the scene and get our bearings. The police had several checkpoints along the way and they warned us that is was a zoo. They were right of course. The small, barley two-way road leading up to the church was jampacked full of cars, satellite trucks and people. It felt like a crowded fair.
About a mile and a half up the road was the mine processing plant. The media had been set up there instead of near the actual mine because the structure was much more tv friendly and there was much more room for the dozens of vehicles and cameras that were set up.
We got on site just before a briefing by executives from the company that owns the coal mine. They gave us a progress report. The rescue team, which had only started going into the mine about four hours earlier, was about 5000 feet into the mine. They said the men had equipment that would provide them with about an hour of air and that they believed the miners were at about 10,000 feet. It was now almost 16 hours since the explosion which trapped the men inside.
After a couple of hours we headed to the hotel in Westin which was about 25 minutes away. Not ideal but it was better than the 40 minute trek to Elkins where everyone else was staying. Every hotel/motel in Buckhannon was full.