Gentner/AP
Emergency vehicles leave the entrance to
Massey's Energy mine on Monday.
Bird/AP
Jenny Waycaster waits for news of her
son, Ken Lambert, following the West Virginia mine explosion.
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said rescuers were "moving very well" to an area 1,200 feet below the surface where the trapped men might be.
"It's important for us to try to get to the survivors as quickly as possible," said Stricklin.
He said the miners would be able to survive for four days if they can reach two rescue chambers stocked with food, water and air near the blast site.
Seven of the men known to be dead were riding out of the shaft in a vehicle when the blast took their lives, safety officials said last night.
The explosion destroyed all communication lines inside the deep shaft at the Massey Energy mine in the small community of Montcoal.
It brought an army of ambulances, fire engines and police cars to the mine, 30 miles south of Charleston.
The explosion occurred around shift-change time in the Upper Big Branch Mine, which is operated by Massey subsidiary Performance Coal.
Although the cause of the blast was not known, the operation has a history of violations for not properly ventilating highly combustible methane gas, safety officials said.
Miner Steve Smith said he and his crew were entering a mine shaft several miles from the explosion site and were forced to evacuate when they felt wind gusts from the blast.
"The farther we got down the track, the more the wind picked up. Your ears stopped up, you couldn't hear and the next thing you know, you're in the middle ofa tornado," Smith told MetroNews Radio in West Virginia.
Officials said up to 20 miners had been pulled from the shattered shaft and were being treated for a range of injuries, including broken bones.
Relatives of missing miners rushed to the scene, pacing outside the rural plant, hoping for good news and comforting the loved ones of those killed or unaccounted for.
It was not immediately clear if special drilling equipment would be needed to reach the trapped miners.
President Obama called West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to express condolences and offer aid.
Officials said the Upper Big Branch Mine employs about 200 miners and produces about 1.2million tons of coal a year.
At least three fatalities have occurred at the mine since 1998, including a miner killed when a roof collapsed on him in 2001 and a worker electrocuted fixing a shuttle car in 2003, records show.
The mine safety administrationfined Massey a then-record $1.5million for 25 violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in a fire at another mine in January 2006.
The explosion comes just four years after a methane explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia killed 12 miners.