Survivor: Sago Miners Expected Rescue
As they sat behind a curtain that held back thick smoke but not deadly carbon monoxide, the doomed crew of the Sago Mine talked about the rescue they thought was coming, the sole survivor says.
The men banged on roof bolts trying to signal where they were trapped, then gathered behind a cloth in the light of one headlamp to wait after the Jan. 2 blast, Randal McCloy Jr. told state and federal investigators earlier this month.
In a transcript released Wednesday of his June 19 interview, McCloy said he believed a seismographic machine somewhere above them was waiting for the signal.
"I figured they'd bring that machine down and would have found us, would have drilled the hole in the right spot and would have took us out of there," he said. "That's what I expected. I was expecting to hear shots fired on the roof ... and didn't hear nothing. We banged and banged and banged, everyone did.
Read a transcript of Randal McCloy Jr.'s statement
"We had a discussion about that, about how long it was going to take. We thought that we was going to get rescued," he said. "And as time went on, it didn't look good."
State mine safety officials released the 96-page transcript after The Associated Press requested a copy under the Freedom of Information Act.
McCloy, 27, survived more than 40 hours of exposure to carbon monoxide and is recovering from brain damage. Eleven of his fellow crew members died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and one miner died from the earlier blast.
Though mine owner International Coal Group Inc. of Ashland, Ky., believes lightning somehow sparked methane gas in the mine, neither state nor federal investigators have identified an official cause of the explosion.