Mine company officials and the state governor expressed pessimism over the prospects for their rescue despite ongoing efforts to drill through to the men.
'The families are clinging to every hope for survival ... but the news has not been consistently favourable,' said Ben Hatfield, president of International Coal Group that operates the mine, in broadcast remarks.
Joe Manchin, the governor of West Virginia, said state rescue crews were also hard at work, but that it would be a miracle to find survivors.
'We still have hope for a miracle for West Virginia,' he said. 'It's going to be a long day. We probably won't know anything until later today or this evening.'
President George Bush assured that the government would do all in its power to help bring the trapped men out.
'May God bless those who are trapped below the earth, and may God bless those who are concerned about those trapped below the earth,' Bush said.
In the details given about the rescue operations, there was a small glimmer of optimism.
Although air samples from a drilling near where the miners were suspected to have been trapped showed dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide, there was a singular thread of hope that the miners may have been able to erect barriers against the lethal gas, Hatfield said.
The early Monday morning explosion at the Sago Mine in Upshur County near Tallmansville occurred as workers arrived for their first shifts after the holidays.
The workers, in two cars, reportedly felt a disturbance but only the second car, containing six miners, was able to get out in time.
No contact could be established with the workers so far, and a camera and a microphone fed into the blocked shaft did not record any signs of life.
The exact location of the men was still unknown. They were thought to be trapped 78 metres under ground.
Rescue efforts Tuesday were concentrated on two more drillings into the mine to locate where the miners are, and to allow air to be pumped in and clear out the toxic gases.
Human crews and robots had been sent into the main shaft through the entrance used daily by miners and had reached 3 kilometres into the mine.
The robot used in the operation had at points gotten bogged down in mud and water, Hatfield said.
In the hole-drilling efforts, Hatfield said the process would be accelerated by concentrating on only three holes instead of multiple digs. One hole has already been finished.
'So far, the impact of carbon monoxide is the highest danger,' he said.
It is still unclear what caused the underground explosion, but Hatfield said there was no indication of fire in the mine.
According to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, the mine's safety records deteriorated clearly in the last year, The New York Times reported. In 2005 it received 208 citations from the agency for violations, some of which the mine operators had known about but not acted upon. The year before there had only been 68.
Like the governor, the families of the missing men tried to stay optimistic.
'We can still find these guys and we need to,' said Terri Goff, a relative of one of miners, in broadcast remarks.
U.S, coal mining fatalities were at a record low in 2005 with 22 miners killed at work, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. In 2004 the number was 28.
Worldwide, miners in China face dimmer prospects of surviving such accidents than in most of the rest of the world. The rate of deaths per million tons of coal brought to the surface in China is 100 times that in the United States and 30 times that in South Africa, two of the world's other major coal producers.
In a high profile mining accident in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 2002, nine coal miners were rescued after three tense days underground amidst rising water levels.
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