Brookwood, Ala. ? Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a three-part serial that tells the story of what happened underground during America’s worst mining disaster in nearly two decades.

Tony Key heard the explosion before he felt it. He half-turned to look and found himself hurtling through the air.

He bounced several times on his side before coming to rest 50 feet away, half-buried in a pile of dirt and coal, disoriented and blinded by the swirl of coal dust.

As he clawed his way out of the rubble, he reached for the self-rescue apparatus in a tube on his belt. In the darkness, he fumbled with the mouthpiece and activated the airbag designed to convert carbon monoxide into breathable oxygen.

Key was terrified.

It was 5:15 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 23, 2001. Less than a minute had passed since the roof fall in Four Section of the No. 5 mine, but it had been time enough for a pocket of gas to escape, reach the electric arc of the battery charger and ignite.

A few yards from Key, Michael McIe had the vague feeling that he was on fire. He remembered the mantra his young daughter recited from school: stop, drop and roll. That’s what he did, rolling about in the dark and patting himself frantically.

McIe heard moaning. He hollered for his friend, Gaston Adams Jr., the third man who had been working on the roof with them. McIe dragged himself toward Adams’ headlamp, the only one still working.

McIe found his friend on the ground, surrounded by chunks of concrete blasted from the nearby wall, unable to move. Adams gave him his light to go for help.

Save your brothers

Dave Blevins, seen here at work in a West Virginia coal mine in the 1990s, was the popular mine foreman who was in charge of the work shift on Sept. 23, 2001, when an explosion rocked the Jim Walter Resources No. 5 mine in Brookwood, Ala. Thirteen miners died.

With Key clinging to his work belt, McIe headed down the tunnel in the direction of the section entrance, several hundred yards away.

They stumbled into Skip Palmer, who’d been ferrying materials to Four Section on a motorized rail cart.

The three of them got in the cart and rode until they could ride no farther. Across the tracks, pipes from Four Section’s ventilation system lay in a useless heap.

Closer to the source of the blast, the force of the explosion had shattered concrete walls, another part of the ventilation system that carried good air into the mine and methane-laden air out.

Any methane seeping into Four Section now had no way to get out.

Key made his way down the tunnel on foot, looking for a phone. By now, three other miners working nearby had made their way up the passageway to investigate.

Key and two of the men climbed into a manbus and made it to the phone.

Rose

“There’s been an explosion,” Key told the control room up on the surface. “We need lots of help. Mine rescue, helicopters, ambulances, everything.”

Thirty-two men were scattered throughout the vast Jim Walter No. 5 mine that evening.

Had they scrambled to the surface, only Adams, too injured to make it out, would have perished. But that is not what they did. Like the New York City police and firefighters who, just days before, had rushed to the World Trade Center towers, the miners raced not from danger but toward it.

Miners have a creed: When trouble happens, you save your brothers. You also save your livelihood. You save the mine.

Control room conflicts

After Key made his call, he realized his back was bothering him. Soon, McIe and Palmer emerged from Four Section on a rail cart. They picked up Key and started toward the mine entrance.

Through the gloom they saw a light in the distance. It was a manbus carrying six men who had come from two miles away. It had been 20 or 30 minutes since the explosion. The first help had arrived.

McIe, in pain from three cracked ribs, recognized Bit Boyd, an old fishing buddy and one of several men who had been vocal recently about gas problems in the mine.

McIe and Palmer clambered into the back seat of the manbus. The rescuers helped Key lie down in front. A man was designated to bring them out.

“Get the hell out of here,” Boyd told them.

Before heading off in the direction of the mine entrance, Key warned the rescuers that with the ventilation system in ruins and the battery possibly on fire, Four Section might explode again.

Key

As the injured men headed down the tracks, Boyd and his four remaining companions headed the other way, toward Four Section.

Dave Blevins, the foreman in charge of the shift that evening, was near the elevator shaft when he first got word of trouble.

He was popular with the men for his attention to safety and for his fairness.

He’d been at work a little over an hour when he heard about the trouble in Four Section, 3 1/2 miles east. He hopped on a manbus and headed that way.

Just ahead of Blevins, 2 1/2 miles west of the roof fall, Ricky Rose and two other “belt crew” workers were busy repairing a section of the mine’s conveyer belt. A phone near them began bleating out an urgent page.

It was the control room, Rose says, alerting them that there had been an “ignition,” of gas in Four Section and asking them to go help put it out.

Ignitions are fairly common and usually no cause for alarm, but it is paramount to jump on them quickly before they race out of control.

According to Rose, the control room made no mention of an explosion. Rose and several other miners say this was the first of several conflicting stories the control room relayed.

Harry House, the control room operator that day, surveyed an array of instruments that monitored activity underground. However, it is unclear how much information he had in the crucial hour after the explosion. House has not responded to requests for an interview but has told federal investigators he consistently informed miners there had been an explosion.

¢Part 1: Mining tragedy’s wounds still fresh

‘A bad feeling’

Rose’s group mounted a rail cart and headed toward Four Section. A short distance down the track, they flagged down their boss and four other belt crew workers to explain where they were heading.

Were they absolutely sure? a supervisor asked. They needed to fix the belt in time for the next shift.

House was insistent, they explained.

Rose and his two companions rode on in silence, winding through the tunnels, until one of them suddenly spoke up.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” he said.

Why were they going to fight a fire that was a half-hour away? By the time they got there, it would either be out or burning out of control.

A second miner agreed: They should be heading for the surface.

Rose listened in silence. He was a gruff, chain-smoking, Harley-Davidson aficionado. Usually nothing scared him.

But quietly he started to pray.

Should Four Section explode again, fire and debris would have nowhere to go but straight at them through the tunnels.

The rescuers were going down the barrel of a gun.