Company officials at the Sago Mine in West Virginia continued to release information as to what went wrong with the disasterous communications failure that added to the pain and anguish of the families.
Rescuers did their jobs and located the place where the survivors had gathered before they all died. We have no idea what they had to go through to find them, but it must have been extremely difficult.
The company says that because the rescue team had to keep their oxygen masks on in order to breathe, they had no choice but to communicate on their radios with the masks on. As a result, the communication was not clear, someone misunderstood the message and the families were notified with all the wrong information.
The company also added other reasons why things happened the way they did, but the above explanation makes the most sense.
Having worn a similar type of oxygen mask and having tried to communicate with others wearing similar types of masks, I can tell you that it isn't easy. One's voice is muffled quite badly. The experience was like being in a room with ten other people who all spoke different languages with only a few common words. I couldn't imagine trying to talk on a radio under those conditions.
Under those circumstances, why use code? Plain language would have been better in this instance. True, someone could have monitored the communication and reported it to the families themselves, taking that job out of the hands of the company, BUT the information would have been accurate and this screw-up could have been avoided.
Hopefully other mines are taking notes on all of this and upgrading their disaster plans.
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