Manchin’s mind instantly reeled back to a frigid January morning in 2006. “We think there might be some fatalities.” “We think we have a problem,” the officer said. Manchin was chatting when a member of his security detail came in and said there’d been an accident.
The legislative session had just ended, a budget had been approved, so Manchin and his wife, Gayle, jumped on a plane Easter Sunday and headed south. Joe Manchin was in South Florida, enjoying a visit with friends. Lynch’s older brother, Roosevelt, 59, was among them.Īround the same time, Gov. It was only when another crew emerged and reported that they’d been showered with debris that Lynch knew that something was wrong.īy 4 p.m., the first word of fatalities reached the surface. When the shift was over, Lynch and the other men on his crew made their way to the surface. The power goes out occasionally when someone runs over a cable, so no one on the section panicked. It came from about a mile and a half inside the mountain, near an area known as the “Glory Hole.”Ī half hour from the end of his nine-hour shift, coal car operator Melvin Lynch, 50, of Mount Hope, felt his ears pop.
last Monday, computers on the surface detected a major seismic event deep inside the mine.
