For Utah mine families, West Virginia a somber reminder of Wilberg, Crandall Canyon, Willow Creek

HUNTINGTON, Emery County — Delorus Whitten stays up every night, waiting for her husband's safe return.

Ten years ago, her husband Charles survived a deadly methane explosion in Utah's Willow Creek Mine. While that mine is now defunct, Charles still works into the early morning hours, deep in another Utah coal mine.

"It was a horrible, horrible experience," Delorus Whitten said. "How he goes back down, I don't know."

Dragging himself out despite broken bones and burned flesh, Whitten was the last one out of the mine after multiple methane blasts killed two co-workers.

"His hair was fried to his skull," Delorus Whitten said, recalling the horrifying injuries.

A West Virginia tragedy is reigniting nightmare memories for Utah's mining community after a similar underground methane blast killed 25 miners Monday and left four more missing in a West Virginia coal mine, the worst U.S. mining disaster since 27 died in Utah's Wilberg Mine in 1984. Meanwhile, rescuers in China are still battling to save 32 miners trapped in a flooded mine shaft.

As survivors struggle to cope and understand, Utahns reflected on the state's own deadly mining past.

"It was like deja vu," Huntington Mayor Hilary Gordon said. "The first thing I thought of was Crandall Canyon."

Gordon said memories of that 2007 tragedy, which claimed nine miners and rescuers near her town, came flooding back as she watched the news reports from West Virginia,

"We were all hoping for the best but fearing the worst," she said.

In the wake of the Crandall Canyon disaster, then-Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr. formed the Utah Mine Safety Commission, which recommended dozens of changes to the state's mining policies.

"Crandall Canyon changed the way we work," Utah Safety Division Director Pete Hackford said. "And we've worked diligently since then to implement all the changes."

Under the commission's recommendations, the state formed an Office of Coal Mine Safety to coordinate safety at Utah mines, Hackford said.

Although the state lacks regulatory power over mines, Hackford said the additional oversight helps prevent future accidents.

"It provides another set of eyes in the mines," he said.

But for the communities torn by deadly mine accidents, more than new rules are needed.