Photo by Steven Allen Adams Gov. Patrick Morrisey said all of West Virginia’s emergency response resources are at the disposal of rescuers trying to find a missing miner in Nicholas County.

CHARLESTON – A coal miner remained missing Monday at a Nicholas County mine with multiple local, state and federal agencies working to locate the missing person.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey provided an update Monday morning during a press conference at the State Capitol Building in Charleston.

“This has been an around-the-clock response from the very beginning since Saturday, and we’re going to continue to do everything imaginable to help,” Morrisey said.

A miner at the Rolling Thunder Mine in Nicholas County – owned by Alpha Metallurgical Resources – is believed to be trapped after a section of the mine wall collapsed and caused flooding Saturday. While most miners were evacuated, efforts have been ongoing to locate the final missing individual, which includes utilizing specialized dive teams and a de-watering effort to remove water from the mine.

“Over the last couple days, there have been a number of dive teams that have been going down and exploring all the potential areas where there may be air pockets and also at the same time, there’s been a very aggressive dewatering effort to try to pull the water from the mine to make things go a lot faster,” Morrisey said.

“I’m told that there are a lot of challenges on the ground,” Morrisey continued. “In particular, when you have to go through the water, there are different training requirements to be a skilled diver than there are to be a mine safety worker. So, the divers have gone in and they’ve been exploring large swaths of the cave.”

Morrisey said the state has been working with the National Cave Rescue Commission and the federal Mine safety and Health Administration (MSHA) on trying to find the missing miner, whose identity is not being released at this time.

“I know I’ve personally been in touch with people around West Virginia and across the country in effort to try to make sure if there’s anything humanly we can do to save the miner’s life, we want to do it,” Morrisey said. “We take care of our own in West Virginia, and I’m going to keep pressing and we’re going to continue to push, because we want to make sure that we give that miner every opportunity to live.”