| W.Va.
miner's last note |
| "I
just went to sleep" |
agencies
It
wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you."
Martin Toler managed to scrawl those words in
a last message to his family as he lay dying
in a West Virginia coal mine this week, one of
12 miners who perished after an explosion on
Monday.
"
Tell all I see them on the other side," he
wrote.
The note, one of several left by the doomed
miners, offered comfort to relatives whose
hopes had
been dashed on Wednesday after hearing false
reports three hours earlier that just one of
13 trapped miners had died.
Instead, only one survived nearly 42 hours
underground following the blast. That miner,
Randal McCloy,
was being kept in a medically induced coma
on Friday, although his wife said he was responding
to her and their two children.
McCloy was transferred on Thursday to Pittsburgh's
Allegheny General Hospital for treatment to
reduce carbon monoxide levels that doctors
fear may
have damaged his brain.
His wife Anna told ABC's "Good Morning America" her
husband became excited when his two small children
visited him. "He knows when I'm there, because
when I'm there he gets excited and he's trying
to lift his eyelids and look at me," she
said.
Dr Richard Shannon told a news conference it
was not uncommon for patients under sedation
like McCloy to show signs such as flickering
eyes and biting down on a breathing tube as
the effects of medication vary.
"
It's our goal to keep him in this state of medically
induced coma," Shannon told a news conference.
McCloy's mother, Tambra Flint, told ABC television
she thought some of the older miners who
died might have shared their oxygen supplies
with
him to save the younger man.
Shannon said there was some improvement in
McCloy's lung and cardiac functions and his
kidneys had
stabilized, but his brain showed signs of
injury. He said it was too soon to tell the
extent
of the damage or if it would be permanent.
SEVERAL NOTES FOUND
West Virginia's worst mining disaster since
1968 was made more poignant by initial reports
saying
12 of the men had survived, prompting three
hours of jubilation that quickly turned to
despair
when family members learned the truth.
Mine authorities have said several notes
were found with the victims, but only Toler's
had
so far been made public.
"
I think he wanted to set our minds at ease, that
he didn't suffer, and I just think that God gave
him peace at the end," his nephew Randy
Toler told CNN.
Randy Toler said other notes were likely
written with his uncle's pen. Martin Toler,
51, was
a section foreman with 32 years' mining
experience.
"
Coal miners typically don't carry ink pens, just
the section boss does. .. and I'm sure he would
have directed them to do that. I'm sure he probably
told them that it didn't look good and they needed
to make peace with their maker."
There has been no explanation for the
explosion on Monday at the Sago Mine,
which employs
about 145 miners and produces about
800,000 tonnes
of coal annually. The central West
Virginia mine is owned by International Coal
Group
Inc.
Investigators were looking into whether
it might be linked to a lightning
strike.
The federal Mine Safety and Health
Administration had issued 50 citations
to the Sago mine,
including some for accumulation of
combustible materials
such as coal dust and loose coal.
 Back
to to
| More
ill |
| Third Turkish
child dead from bird flu |
agencies
Turkey — A
third child from the same family in eastern Turkey
died from bird flu on Friday and health experts
plan to study the outbreak for signs the virus
was passing from person to person.
Doctors were treating more than 20 other people,
mostly youngsters, suspected of having the deadly
virus. Some of the victims had been playing with
the severed heads of infected birds, doctors
said.
The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed 74 people
in east Asia and has now spread to the fringes
of Europe.
It has so far been hard for people to catch but
there are fears it could mutate into a form easily
transmitted among humans. Experts say a pandemic
among humans could kill millions and cause massive
economic losses.
A spokeswoman in Geneva said the World Health
Organization (WHO) was sending experts to the
area who would check for any signs the virus
had been passed from person to person -- something
that has happened in only one previous but unconfirmed
case.
"
It is possible that they all had common exposure
to sick poultry but it is also possible there
may have been human to human transmission. We
don't have enough information to draw a hypothesis
either way," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng
said.
"
That is certainly one of the possibilities that
the team is going to be investigating," she
added.
The latest child to die was Hulya Kocyigit,
11, the sister of Mehmet Ali, a 14-year-old
boy who
died last weekend, and of Fatma, 15, a girl
who died on Thursday. She was buried alongside
her
brother and sister on Friday in a lime-covered
grave.
Final tests at a WHO laboratory have confirmed
two of the victims had bird flu. The additional
tests are carried out to confirm the preliminary
diagnosis and it normally takes a few days
for the results to come through.
MORE CASES
Turkey's farm minister said bird flu had
been detected in two wild ducks near the
capital
Ankara, nearly 1,000 km (700 miles) west
of infected
areas where the three children died.
The discovery suggests migratory birds may
be spreading the disease across the large
country, as experts had warned.
The dead children lived in a remote rural
district of eastern Turkey near the Armenian
and Iranian
borders, mixing with poultry -- just like
the east Asian victims. Neighboring Azerbaijan
was also going to run tests on suspect dead
birds.
Doctors treating victims at a hospital in
the eastern city of Van said the disease
had been
contracted from sick birds.
"
All our patients have been in close proximity
to poultry. Some patients handled the infected
poultry, some of them were even playing with
the heads of chickens," BBC television quoted
doctor Ahmet Faik Oner as saying.
A joint WHO/European Commission team is
expected to arrive in eastern Turkey on
Friday. Four
more WHO experts will go to Turkey at the
weekend.
Doctors said more than 20 people were being
treated for suspected bird flu in hospital
in the eastern
city of Van.
he patients, many of them
children, come from several provinces across
eastern
Turkey.
Six children were being tested for suspected
bird flu in the city of Diyarbakir, hundreds
of kilometers southwest of the area so
far affected, hospital officials said.
The dead children's six-year-old brother
was also being treated for the same disease
in
hospital. But their parents were in good
health as they
received visitors paying condolences at
their tiny one-room cottage in the town
of Dogubayazit.
"
There is no doctor here, we are very poor," Ibrahim
Kocyigit, a relative, told Reuters in a tent
set up near the house to accommodate the flood
of visitors.
In Dogubayazit, an anxious crowd gathered
outside the state agricultural offices
to dump sacks
of dead poultry or ask for their poultry
to be culled.
"
After the deaths everybody is scared. We are
all getting rid of our chickens and nobody dares
eat their meat," said local trader Devlet
Kaya.
The WHO said in a statement dated Thursday
that Turkish authorities had told
it that the district
had been placed under quarantine,
with no people or animals allowed to move
in or out.
However,
a Reuters reporter there on Friday
saw
no controls.
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