Miner’s Notes Speak of Peace

Some of the 12 miners who died in the Sago mine scribbled out goodbye notes to loved ones, assuring their loves ones that their final hours were not spent in agony. “It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep. I love you. Jr.” said a note from 51-year-old mine formeman Martin Toler Jr. It sounds like at most, there were four notes found in the mine. All of the notes had a similar message: the men didn’t suffer. One daughter who had gone to identify her father said that he had the peaceful look of someone who died of carbon monoxide, and the only mark on his body was a bruise on his chest.

Randal McCloy, the sole survivor, was move from a hospital in Morgantown to one in Pittsburgh for hyperbaric oxygen treatment. He remains in critical condition in a coman, and doctors now say that he may have suffered brain damage after all. “Certianly Mr. McCloy is going to have a tough course,” Dr. John Prescott said. “We just don’t know at this point how things will turn out.”

The first of the funerals are set to begin on Saturday.