Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette
	Judy Moomaw, left, and her sister Elaine Smith, both of Cumberland, Md., pray in front of a cross erected in Phillipi, W.Va., yesterday in memorial to their cousin, Jack Weaver, of Phillipi, one of four miners from Barbour County who were among the 12 killed in the West Virginia mine disaster this week. The other crosses are for David Lewis, Marshall Winans and Jim Bennet.
	RELATED COVERAGE Long-term prognosis unclear for survivor of mine disaster Wife gives miner sound, smell of home Funeral arrangements for nine miners $2 million donation starts fund for families
	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
	Anna McCloy, wife of surviving Sago miner Randal McCloy, talks to the media at a press conference held at Allegheny General Hospital on the North Side last night. Mr. McCloy is receiving oxygen treatments to counteract carbon monoxide poisoning. At right is West Virginia's first lady Gayle Manchin.
	RADIO REPORTS ON THE MINERS A transcript of emergency workers' radio traffic Tuesday night at Sago Mine No. 1. 11:48 p.m. Voice 1: "7472." Voice 2: "Go ahead, Matt." Voice 1: "You might as well just stand still right where you're at, Gary. They did find them, and they're all OK, I guess, so, I think we might be transporting them. I'm not exactly sure, but we're stuck right here." Voice 1: "10-4, Matt." 11:54 p.m. Voices: (inaudible) Voice 1: "And what am I telling them?" Voice 2: (inaudible) "Twelve, and they're bringing them out." Voice 1: "And they're all alive." Voice 2: "Uh, as far as I know (inaudible)."

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. -- Accident investigators spent yesterday above ground, strategizing on how to safely re-enter and examine the Sago Mine, while families of 12 miners killed in Monday's explosion made preparations for funerals.

Medical examiners yesterday determined that the men died of carbon monoxide poisoning after an explosion apparently consumed oxygen inside the mine and blew down block walls used to direct fresh air into the 2¹/₂ miles of mine shaft.

As investigators mapped out plans to enter the mine early next week, a top Mine Safety and Health Administration officials visited here to check progress.

Robert Friend, the labor department's acting deputy assistant secretary for MSHA, said inspectors would go over all electrical equipment inside the mine, taking custody of some, if necessary, to find out what might have ignited the explosion. Investigators are also looking at the possibility that a lightning strike could have traveled into the mine, possibly via a ventilation duct, and ignited a pocket of methane that gathered inside a closed section that had been sealed off.

"I wouldn't want to speculate, but something did explode. It was either coal dust or gas," Mr. Friend said.

Inspectors yesterday took samples of air from the mine and found elevated carbon monoxide levels. Mr. Friend said it could take several days to flush out the mine sufficiently to allow investigators to enter.

"There's no one in the mine at the moment. There has to be some rehabilitation work done at the mine for the underground investigation. The ventilation has to be restored," said Terry Farley, a spokesman for the West Virginia Office of Miners Health, Safety and Training.

That office last year issued 144 separate safety violations against Sago Mine, and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration levied $24,000 in fines against the mine for 208 safety violations -- half of them classified as "significant and substantial" violations, including inadequate plans for dealing with ventilation.

Lightning strikes have been blamed for previous mine explosions, particularly in worked-out, sealed areas where a flammable mixture of methane gas and air has built up.

Among the researchers who have studied the matter in an effort to prevent those explosions are scientists at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health's Pittsburgh Research Laboratory in South Park.

In a paper released late last year, Thomas J. Fisher, of the laboratory, and co-author Thomas Novak, of the University of Alabama's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studied the potential of methane explosions caused by lighting spreading through the earth.

They conducted computer simulations, using a model of an abandoned 600-foot-deep mine containing an underground transportation system and roof bolts and mimicking a lightning strike with electrical current. In one scenario, they also added a steel-cased borehole, of a type found near abandoned sections of some mines where lightning was suspected of causing explosions.

They determined that the presence of a steel-cased borehole in a mine "dramatically enhances the possibility'' of lightning triggering an explosion in a 600-foot-deep mine.

The mine's owner, International Coal Group, which took over the Sago Mine Nov. 18, did not respond to questions about the violations or the ongoing investigation. Nor did it respond to questions about whether the mine contained steel-cased boreholes or about its seals. Company President Ben Hatfield has previously refused to discuss the safety violations, saying he has not yet reviewed the information.

Mr. Friend, the MSHA official, said his office had increased on-site inspection time at the Sago Mine by 84 percent last year because of its higher-than-average number of injuries and illnesses.

The department also shut down sections of the mine or equipment at the site 18 times last year, Mr. Friend said.

Investigators have been delayed from entering the mine because the blast knocked away a series of stoppings -- cinder block walls set up to direct the flow of air from the mine mouth to the working area deep inside. It was the collapse of the stoppings that cut off the flow of air to the miners, who were equipped with emergency tanks that gave them one hour's worth of oxygen. The miners erected a cloth and wood barricade deep inside the mine, hoping to close in a supply of usable air. Eleven of them were found dead behind that barricade. A twelfth was located closer to the mine mouth.

One miner, Randal McCloy, 26, survived behind the barricade, and has remained in critical condition in a coma. On Thursday he was transferred from West Virginia University Medical Center to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

In the town of Philippi, 20 miles to the north in neighboring Barbour County, a steady trickle of visitors stopped by a row of four white crosses planted in the front of the courthouse. Each one was topped with a miner's hard hat and bore a name: Weaver, Lewis, Winans, Bennett. Of the 12 miners killed, four hailed from Barbour, and a trio of weekend funerals is expected to stretch from one end of town to the other.

Rose Poling laid flowers at the last cross, the one commemorating Jim Bennett, a shuttle car operator at Sago Mine.

"He was just a good, Christian person and he was a good family man. And that's all," Mrs. Poling said, before breaking into sobs.

Mr. Bennett's status as a Christian was no exaggeration, said Matt Brown, a local man who worked with three of the men at other mines.

"Some of them were real close friends. Very good miners. Very good men. Jimmy Bennett was probably the closest one to me," he said. "He was a Christian man. He would pray for people when they went in the mines, when they'd go in every day. He'd pray when he had his time off at lunchtime. He'd get off by himself."

The other miners commemorated by the crosses, Dave Lewis, Marshall Winans, and Jackie Weaver, left behind families and friends stunned by the disaster.

"You don't get over it," said Ron Gray, a deputy sheriff who spent 16 years in the mines. "You do the best you can to move on. You think of how many lives each of these people would have touched. You begin to see the loss."