CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia native who was part of the rescue attempt at the Rolling Thunder mine in Nicholas County last year said it was the first time that kind of search had ever been attempted.
Tucker Palmatier was an invited guest of Governor Patrick Morrisey at Wednesday’s State of the State Address. Palmatier, of White Sulphur Springs, is with the Cave Diving Group of the National Speleological Society.
“We specialize in sump rescue. That’s the effort of diving through underwater passages to get to people in a survivable space on the other side,” Palmatier explained.
He and six comrades were in Tennessee doing training in November when they got a call from mine rescue officials who were trying to figure out the easiest way to get into the Rolling Thunder Mine and search to see if the last man inside, Steve Lipscomb, by some miracle may have survived an inundation of water. They were able to respond quickly because they were already geared up and were only a few hours away.
“The governor said we did this ‘without hesitation’ but I had to swallow that a little because I think I had some hesitation when we discussed the risk and the situation because nobody knew,” he said.
The challenges and danger were high level. Nobody had ever tried to dive in a coal mine. The water would be cold, there would be no surface space, and it would be impossible to see. Those were the known dangers. Palmatier and his team entered water that was saturated with coal dust and visibility was zero in an environment with debris floating near the mine roof and unknown piles of twisted debris along the floor. They used the mine’s life-line to guide them through the entries. They were unable to see markers to let them know where they were, but the lights on their helmets gave a reflective glow to at least point them in the right direction.
“We didn’t know if there was equipment blocking the way completely. We didn’t know if the ceiling had collapsed, we didn’t know how long the distance was going to be that we had to swim through,” he explained in an interview with MetroNews. “We knew it was underwater, pitch black, and we couldn’t see anything, but there were so many other answers we needed to be able to do it comfortably that we didn’t have.”
Palmatier and another man in his group did the first dive in the environment. They were able to get through the first flooded entry of the mine and came to the other side where there was a high spot which was not flooded. They explored the area looking for Lipscomb, hoping to find him alive, before taking a second dive which was part of the rescue attempt. Lipscomb’s body would eventually be found in an area which was flooded and mine safety officials estimated he died in the first ten minutes of the inundation. Palmatier admitted it was possible they could have moved right by him and never known.
“That is absolutely a possibility and it was something we were prepared for as we were swimming through. I was moving logs out of the way but as I grabbed every piece of debris you give it a little squeeze to see if it’s soft,” he said.
Palmatier now hopes to make underwater dives a regular part of mine safety efforts when there is a flooded mine situation. He hoped his team of highly skilled individuals could become another resource for mine rescue teams going forward.
“Getting this as a capability for future mine rescues and expanding what our initial charter was which was caves to cover mines and to work with the mining credentialing organizations is really important to me,” he said.
He is already in discussion with the West Virginia University Extension Service to explore their mine rescue training programs and to make the underwater diving a part of those activities. He added he’d like to get his team more education about the terminology and practices of underground mining to know what they would be dealing with in the future.
The idea of cave diving was born out of a situation several years ago in Thailand when a youth soccer team became stranded in a flooded cave in Thailand. Those victims were successfully rescued.