Update: Only One Miner Survived

The first initial response last night was that 12 miners had survived the mine explosion. But, this morning, they found that only one young man had survived. They all appear to have died from carbon monoxide.

The Sago mines was issued a total of 208 federal violations last year.That was up from 68 the year before.

When asked about the facility's safety record at a news conference yesterday, Ben Hatfield, International Coal's chief executive officer, said the Ashland, Kentucky-based company has improved safety conditions since acquiring the mine last year. ``We have no interest of getting into the finger-pointing of who is responsible for what, and what went wrong a year ago,'' Hatfield said. ``This is a mine that operated for some significant time before my company even had involvement with it; so much of the bad history that you're talking about was beyond our reach and ability to control.'

The tragedy in all this is the fact that the families were told three hours earlier that all 12 of the miners were alive. Then, they were told that, in fact, they were all dead. I cannot imagine the anger these people feel, having been told their relatives were alive, and then waiting 3 hours and finding this wasn't the truth.

The lone survivor was identified as Randal McCloy Jr. McCloy, 27, was hospitalized in critical condition, the Associated Press reported, citing a doctor.