(Reuters) – Rescue teams on Wednesday were set to use a recently cleared opening to search for three people who have been lost for four days in an abandoned mine in southwestern West Virginia, deep in the Appalachian Mountains.
The trio have been missing since they entered through a ventilation shaft of the Rock House Powellton mine on Saturday near Clear Creek, an unincorporated area among several remote coal mining communities, the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office said.
The missing people are Erica Treadway, 31, Kayla Williams, 25, and Cody Beverly, 21, the sheriff said.
“I believe I can speak for most of the community when saying that we’re grieving, we’re anxious, we’re hopeful, we’re tired and wore out but we got a lot of hope,” Greg Scarbro, grandfather of one of the missing, told Metro News, a media outlet in West Virginia.
A fourth person, Eddie Williams, 43, found his own way out of the mine on Monday night, Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Mark McCray said.
“They are in there, in the dark and probably lost … it’s complete and total blackness,” McCray said in a telephone interview.
Rescue teams have spent the last four days searching different parts of the mine. They have gone about 11,000 feet (3,400 m) deep into the mine so far, McCray said.
A team of rescuers were to enter the mine through a main portal in Boone County that was cleared over the last 24 hours. Two other four-man teams will enter the mine from another entrance in Raleigh County, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s office said in a statement.
Workers were also pumping fresh air into the mine, allowing rescue teams to expand their search, McCray said.
On Monday, Justice visited family members at a local community center and rescue workers before they went into the mine.
The West Virginia National Guard along with several local and state agencies are helping in the rescue, the governor said.
An explosion at a coal mine in same area in 2010 killed 29 people. The Upper Big Branch Mine explosion was the worst U.S. mine disaster in four decades.
Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Wis.; Editing by Matthew Lewis