Miners left notes to loved ones

Some of the 12 coal miners who died following an explosion in West Virginia left notes behind assuring family members that their final hours trapped underground were not spent in agony, a relative said today.

“The notes said they weren’t suffering, they were just going to sleep,” said Peggy Cohen, who had been called to a makeshift morgue at a school to identify the body of her father, 59-year-old mining machine operator Fred Ware.

Cohen said a note was not left with Ware’s body, but that she planned to retrieve his personal belongings later to see if he left one in his lunch box.

But she said the medical examiner told her notes left with several of the bodies all carried a similar message: “Your dad didn’t suffer.”

Ware was among a dozen miners who were found after 41 hours inside the mine.

They were found at the deepest point of the Sago Mine, about 2.5 miles from the entrance, behind a fibrous plastic cloth stretched across an area about 6 metres wide to keep out deadly carbon monoxide gas.

The sole survivor, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, remains in critical condition in a coma.