Note Shows Miners Lived 10 Hours After W.Va. Blast

Father Wrote of Love For Family, Woman Says

PHILIPPI, W.Va., Jan. 7 -- 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 relative 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 from 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 said. "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 behind a plastic curtain erected to keep out deadly carbon monoxide.

Merideth said her father "didn't know how much more time he had. But he wanted . . . to tell my mom that he loved her. And he wanted me and my brother to know that he loved us."

Merideth said the note left her with comfort but also anger that her father could have been alive and lucid long enough to have been rescued. She said the note made clear that other miners were alive, too.

The first rescuers did not go into the mine until 11 hours after the blast, a lag that coal company officials said was necessary to clear the mine of high concentrations of poisonous gases.

The lone survivor, Randal McCloy Jr., 26, showed dramatic improvement Saturday, doctors said. McCloy was still in a medically induced coma to allow his brain time to heal, but when the medication was eased, his eyes flickered and he bit down on his breathing tube, showing he was "awake underneath our coma," said Richard Shannon, speaking for the team that was treating McCloy at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

McCloy's injured muscles are improving, along with his liver and heart function, and tests show reduced brain swelling and bleeding, Shannon said.

When doctors ease the medically induced coma, he "does move spontaneously, he does flicker his eyelashes," Shannon said. "All his brainstem functions appear to be intact."

A hospital spokesman later said McCloy was well enough to be flown back to West Virginia University's Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown.