The news that their their loved ones had been found alive in a carbon-monoxide filled mine shaft 40 hours after Monday's explosion triggered celebrations and ringing of church bells.
But just hours later, the mood crashed as officials of the International Coal Group (ICG) told them the information was wrong, and that 12 miners had died. The 13th survived and is in serious, but wakeful, condition in a West Virginia hospital with a collapsed lung.
An investigation was being launched by federal authorities into the causes of the accident and also 'how emergency information was relayed' about the trapped miners' conditions, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labour Department said Wednesday.
U.S. President George Bush expressed condolences to the 'loved ones whose hearts are broken' and thanked West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, for 'showing such compassion'.
For some hours earlier Wednesday, Manchin was at the center of the controversy as the possible source of the false report. But he insisted he was in the dark, waiting in a side room at the church where cheers broke out over the first hopeful report.
The miners' families had already spent more than 40 hours huddled in the church near the Sago Mine, waiting for news of loved ones, when one of them received an unauthorized phone call or visit from someone at the rescue command center saying 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive.
It took another three hours for the company to deliver the correct information at about 2:30 a.m. local time - a step that provoked anger and shoving, witnesses said.
Don Casto, a community resident who lost friends in the explosion, described the mood swings in broadcast remarks.
'We heard a hollering and a shouting, 'They're alive, They're alive!',' Casto told Cable News Network.
He said his first reaction was that it was 'hearsay', and he was asking questions.
'We was waitin' for them to come over and give us a briefing because they come over ever' so often,' Casto said in his lilting West Virginia brogue.
He said the bearer of the tragically misguided news assured loved ones that the miners would soon be brought to the church 'and the immediate family would talk to them'.
'We waited and waited three and a half hours,' he said.
The false report triggered jubilation and celebration inside the church. 'We was jumpin' and huggin' each other and singin' hymns,' the father-in-law of the lone survivor told CNN.
Many U.S. newspapers were at deadline time as the wrong news emerged, and carried banner front page headlines proclaiming 'ALIVE!'
Ben Hatfield, who heads ICG and later told reporters that a 'tragic miscommunication' had led to the false report, finally came to the church to deliver the tragic news.
One woman who apparently was not a relative told CNN that there was some fighting and shoving between angry relatives and state troopers inside the church.
'People were screaming, 'You're a liar',' the witness said. 'There were four-letter words...people saying 'hypocrites' and 'liars',' she told CNN.
It is still not clear who generated the false report. Reports said the company knew within 20 minutes after the miscommunication that it was wrong, but Hatfield said the company waited so long for the correction to spare loved ones another emotional rollercoaster.
Hatfield apologized for the mixup, and said it appeared that someone in the rescue command center had 'listened in' to an open transmission among rescue workers and thought the 12 had survived.
'The company never made a release, we simply couldn't confirm it,' he said. 'Someone with good intentions communicated bad information.'
The miner who was found alive, Randal McCloy, 27, was being kept sedated and suffered some kidney problems, according to Dr. Larry Roberts of West Virginia University Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia.
A Monday morning explosion trapped the miners. Six miners in a separate vehicle managed to escape and describe the explosion.
The blast apparently occurred from an old sealed off mine. It was not clear what set off the explosion, possibly a rock fall or a lightning strike. The miners barricaded themselves using a special cloth, and used breathing equipment against the carbon monoxide until it gave out, officials said.
'We were at long odds,' Manchin said. 'Everybody who understands the mining situation understands we were in a difficult situation.'
According to federal officials, the mine's safety records deteriorated in the last year. In 2005 it received 208 citations from the agency for violations. In 2004 there had only been 68.
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.
