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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The use of a code to prevent media eavesdropping on the Sago Mine rescue mission is not to blame for the miscommunication that had relatives believing for three hours that 12 men had survived, International Coal Group Inc. said Monday.
Transcripts of interviews that state and federal investigators conducted after the Jan. 2 explosion suggest the code developed by ICG safety manager Tim Martin may have contributed to the misinformation. The 13 miners trapped underground were to be referred to as items if they were found dead, with each ''item'' assigned a number.
Only Randal McCloy Jr. was carried out of the mine alive more than 41 hours after the explosion. One miner was believed to have died in the initial blast, and the rest died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
ICG Vice President Charles Snavely said the code was not the problem; the initial report from mine rescue teams to the command center on the surface was that ''12 are alive.''
''We believe that the initial miscommunication was the result of rescue teams having to relay messages orally and via walkie-talkie multiple times between the barricade and the fresh-air base ... before the information could be clearly transmitted to the command center,'' he said.
Rescuers also were wearing breathing devices that made their words difficult to understand, Snavely said.
''The company will not engage in criticism of the communications from underground,'' he added, ''as we know that all rescue workers involved were operating in extreme conditions and engaged in heroic efforts to save lives.''
The company has said lightning sparked the fatal blast, but the official cause has yet to be determined. The federal Mine Health and Safety Administration and the state Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training are still investigating.
Together, those agencies have interviewed more than 70 people. Transcripts of those private meetings were obtained by The Charleston Gazette.
Investigators have said they would examine how information was relayed from rescue teams working more than 2 miles inside the mine to the command center.
On Jan. 4, ICG President Ben Hatfield told reporters he believed someone in the mine misheard communications from rescuers after they reached the bodies. That was relayed to the surface, and someone who heard that report relayed it to the families. Hatfield also said at the time that a number of people in the command center defied an order to keep information to themselves and made calls on their cell phones.
During his interview with investigators, Martin said ICG developed the code after it became concerned that ''information from the command center was leaking to the press.''
Martin said he typed up a spreadsheet that listed each of the missing miners, and assigned them a number. Rescue teams were given a copy of the list, he said. If they found bodies, they were to identify them as ''items'' and by their ''item number,'' Martin said.
Several rescuers told investigators they found the missing miners because they heard McCloy moaning and trying to breathe.
Jim Klug, captain of Consol Energy's McElroy Mine rescue team, was among the first rescuers to enter the area where 11 miners had barricaded themselves behind ventilation curtains to protect their fresh air supply. The body of fireboss Terry Helms had already been found in a different location.
Klug told investigators that another miner had apparently fallen over on top of McCloy.
Once the rescuers turned McCloy over to medical teams, Klug learned that people on the surface believed the miners were alive. He called to the surface to report his findings.
''They wanted me to tell him items, item one, item two, you know,'' Klug recalled in his interview. ''They didn't want any names coming over, because they said people were eavesdropping and stuff like that. So I told him we had 11 items, and he said, 'What?'
''I said, 'We got 11 items,''' Klug said. ''And he said, 'Forget the code. What do you mean?' I said, 'There are 11 deceased people.'''
Martin said officials in the command center might have misunderstood an initial report - not Klug's - about rescuers finding 11 ''items.''
He told command center officials to confirm the message because ''it just hit me like a ton of bricks that I knew what that meant. But then I could see that the rest of the room didn't understand.
''And the answer came back, we have one on a stretcher and 11 items. And they turned to me and said, 'See, we're OK,' or something to that effect.''
Martin told the command center to drop the code and just ask how many survivors.
''So they called back in and said, 'Do you have 11 survivors and one on a stretcher?' And they said, 'No, it's the other way around.'
''And that's when everyone finally understood that, you know, we had fatalities,'' Martin said. ''And again, you know the emotions of the room just it's almost like everybody in the room died.''
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