Search for trapped worker inside a West Virginia coal mine is a rescue
operation, governor says
[November 13, 2025]
By JOHN RABY
Crews desperately continued removing massive amounts of water in an
effort to locate a trapped worker inside a flooded coal mine in West
Virginia as the work entered a fifth day Wednesday.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the efforts by crews about three-fourths of a
mile into the Rolling Thunder Mine remained a rescue operation. Machines
were pumping out water at a rate of 6,000 gallons (22,712 liters) per
minute, he said. That's enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in
under two hours.
“I think people are doing everything imaginable,” Morrisey said.
"There’s no quit in anyone here.”
Morrisey said Wednesday night on the social media site X that an
additional pumping unit was added but that water levels inside the mine
"have yet to reach the point where entry is possible.”
Old mine wall collapsed
A mining crew hit an unknown pocket of water Saturday about
three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) into the mine near Belva,
about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the state capital of Charleston.
The mine flooded after an old mine wall “was compromised,” and multiple
state agencies were involved in the response, Morrisey said.
Other miners were accounted for after the accident was reported.
Morrisey said he had no estimate on the number of crews working on the
rescue effort inside the mine, but “obviously there are a lot of
machines pulling the water out."
“There’s a lot of water that’s been drained, but there’s also a massive
amount in there that still needs to be drained," he said, estimating
that the water level was dropping about one inch (2.5 centimeters) per
hour.
In addition, holes have been drilled in the mine and dive teams have
explored potential areas in the water where air pockets might exist, the
governor said. The National Cave Rescue Commission has provided surplus
Army phones attached to wires that can travel great distances to enable
for better underground communication.
The United Mine Workers union also sent its safety experts to the
nonunion mine.
“We are all coal miners, and we all care about the safety and health of
each other,” union President Brian Sanson said in a statement.
Area has been ‘extensively explored’
Rolling Thunder is one of 11 underground mines operated in West Virginia
by Tennessee-based Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. The company also
operates four surface mines in the state, as well as three underground
and one surface mine in Virginia.
Morrisey said the abandoned mine next to Rolling Thunder operated in the
1930s and 1940s.
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The Rolling Thunder coal mine near Swiss, in Nicholas County, West
Virginia, is seen in this aerial photo on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
(Sean McCallister/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)
A report prepared in February for Alpha by an engineering consulting
firm, Marshall Miller & Associates, said the area had been
“extensively explored” by previous mine owners, generating “a
significant amount of historical data” that Alpha examined in
assessing its potential for producing coal.
The same report says that the Rolling Thunder coal seam runs along
and below the drainage of TwentyMile Creek, but said there were “no
significant hydrologic concerns” about digging for more coal in the
extensively mined property.
The region is known both for its coal seams and tourism. The nearby
Gauley River is popular for its fall whitewater rafting season, and
the picturesque New River Gorge National Park to the south is the
nation's newest national park.
The nearest business to the mine in the rural, sparsely populated
area is a convenience store about 15 minutes from the winding road
leading to the mine. Two businesses about 30 minutes away have
supplied food to the rescue crews, and Nicholas County Commissioner
Garrett Cole said the mine company also brought in a food truck.
“Miners are part of the family," Morrisey said. “They’ve contributed
so much to West Virginia. This is part of the fabric of our state.
When times are tough, people step up and deliver. I think that's
what's happening here.”
It has happened before
Cole reminded worried residents of a 1968 accident in the same
county in which miners working for Gauley Coal and Coke at Hominy
Falls accidentally tunneled into an unmapped abandoned mine nearby,
flooding their operation. Four men died, but 15 miners were brought
to the surface after five days and six others further into the mine
were rescued after 10 days.
In 2002 in southwestern Pennsylvania, nine miners were rescued after
spending more than three days trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine.
“Miracles CAN Happen - Have Faith!” Cole wrote on Facebook.
U.S. coal deaths
Four of the six reported deaths at U.S. coal mines this year have
occurred in West Virginia, and two of them were at Alpha facilities.
One happened at Alpha subsidiary Marfork Coal’s processing facility
in nearby Raleigh County when an elevator being tested struck a
miner on a first-floor platform. Another was at Alpha’s Black Eagle
underground operation in Raleigh County in February when a piece of
a coal seam fell on a contractor, according to the U.S. Mine Safety
and Health Administration.
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