PHILIPPI, W.Va. (AP) - A coal miner left a detailed note showing that he and other trapped workers were alive at least 10 hours after an underground explosion, a family member said Saturday. The daughter of 61-year-old Jim Bennett, who was a shuttle car operator in the mine, said the note has three or four entries, the first coming Monday at 11:40 a.m. and the last, in words that trailed off the page, at 4:25 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the blast.
"Each time he documented, you could tell it was getting worse," Ann Merideth told The Associated Press. "Later on down the note he said that it was getting dark. It was getting smoky. They were losing air."
Monday's blast killed one miner immediately and 11 more who were found nearly 42 hours later huddled together behind a plastic curtain erected to keep out deadly carbon monoxide.
The lone survivor found among those corpses, 26-year-old Randal McCloy Jr., remains critically ill in a medically induced coma at a Pittsburgh hospital. Doctors believe he has brain damage from severe oxygen deprivation.
