SWISS, W.Va. — The search of a flooded coal mine for a missing miner in Nicholas County is a painfully slow process.
The work continues with a number of operations underway at Alpha Metallurgical’s Rolling Thunder mine after the entries suddenly flooded Saturday. Several workers managed to get out, but one was unaccounted for. The effort to locate him is ongoing.
“Dive teams have gone down, but they have not located the missing miner. The efforts continue and right now a lot of the focus is on draining the water to be in a position where it will be easier to identify the person,” said Governor Patrick Morrisey during an update for MetroNews “Talkline” on Monday.
Three different dive teams are alternating going into the dark and flooded entries to continue the search for the missing man whose name was not released. There are also operations to drill air vent holes into other parts of the mine and a third operation as the Governor noted to pump out as much of the water as possible.
The flood happened after the seal to an old mine works gave way, but it’s unclear if that is where the water was backed up. Nicholas County Commissioner Garrett Cole said eventually they’ll address the source of the water in a post incident report, but for now the focus is on locating the missing miner.
“From everything we’ve heard, and of course reports will prove later, it was a very substantial amount of water and it came very quickly,” he said.
Local, state, and federal agencies continue working around the clock with Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc., to locate the missing miner at the Nicholas County Rolling Thunder Mine.
Since the initial event, numerous organizations have joined in the rescue effort, including the…
— Governor Patrick Morrisey (@wvgovernor) November 10, 2025
Morrisey said one of the challenges is finding people who are equipped with the skill set to perform the dangerous and precarious kind of search which is necessary.
“There have been multiple dive teams who have gone down and that’s a very difficult thing to do. I’ve been talking to people across the country and even folks in the federal government to try and find more people with the kind of expertise who could be engaged in the diving aspect of it and the mine rescue side of the equation. Then of course there are a lot of other environmental challenges on the ground,” the Governor explained.
The most difficult part of the ordeal for those not tied to the search is the endless waiting. It’s particularly tough for co-workers and loved ones who are hanging on every shred of news. So far there hasn’t been much to report and they are in non-stop prayer in hopes of a miracle.
“Seems like hour by hour it’s been, ‘Is there anything we can do?’ So far it seems like everything has gone smooth and went well and we’re just in this waiting period,” said Cole.
The mine is located in an extremely remote area of Nicholas County with no towns in close proximity and very few residences nearby. The situation has made the waiting different than previous coal mining disasters in West Virginia where people congregated in a certain location. Cole said in some ways that has been helpful in that teams are able to have separation to do what they need to do to execute the search which continues.