IN OUR culture we probably use the word trauma too lightly as we attempt to compensate for everyday loss of life. It is also true that in mining communities such as West Virginia the families involved knew what they risked. Mining has always killed miners and it always will. Death itself is not the problem.

The difficulty in this event is how far the human coping response can stretch before it snaps. To be told that relatives whom you feared dead are alive only to learn they are dead after all amounts to torture. The result is double bereavement.

When we fear the worst, although still hoping for the best, we are at least braced. All our physical senses are on alert. We may label this state high anxiety but at this stage levels of chemicals such as noradrenaline and cortisol soar to cushion the impact of shock. The brain clears its deck of everyday mental clutter so that we can face a true nightmare and begin to interpret the potential consequences.

Receiving good news will naturally reverse these processes. We lower our security guard because it is metabolically expensive. Mentally, we start to place an ultragloss on an excitingly rosy future. Literally, we breathe a huge sigh of relief. But to go from fear to elation to ritual celebration only to have the whole edifice crash down is to be “battered between two mallets”, as the therapist Alan Jamieson has put it. Here is an emotional ambush of maximum impact that caused fistfights among those gathered. I am only surprised that nobody died outright of shock.

It is redolent of the scenes among relatives of those who died on the submarine Kursk in August 2000 after the Russian authorities had initially reported that all was well with the boat apart from slight technical problems.

Wives and children were allowed to hope that their men would return, when in truth all 118 hands were doomed.

The relatives at that time vowed that they could never forgive the cover-up and dissembling because it really did trivialise human grief.

For officialdom, this became unendurable and some of the widows were forcibly tranquilised to stop them making trouble.

The emotional consequences in West Virginia now will include a grief anger that will be unlimited because some of the bloodshed will appear to be on the authorities’ hands. Homicidal rage in a society of gun owners is a concern.

Modern trauma response avoids any specific debriefing, wisely waiting instead to see who might need professional counselling or psychotherapy. In the short term, it is family and friends who offer the key support.

When a community is shattered it is imperative that the authorities establish some form of truth commission alongside any legal processes to vitiate the fury and grief.

But above all the plight of the potential survivor Randal McCloy Jr must be considered. If he lives, he will not only have lost colleagues and perhaps his religious faith but will find himself the target of unappeasable and paradoxical animosity from parts of the community. Survivor guilt may collide with the envious resentment of the bereaved. As a survivor, Mr McCloy will prove to be no man to envy.

Bereavement psychotherapist Phillip Hodson is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

DIARY OF DESPAIR

MONDAY

6.31am (11.31am GMT) Explosion in Sago Mine causes rock collapse, trapping 13. The first of two crews sent into mine
6.40am Second six-member crew raises alarm. Mine superintendent goes about 9,000ft into the mine but turns back, meeting high levels of carbon monoxide
6pm (approx) Rescue workers sent in
8.30pm Drilling equipment placed over expected location of miners
10.45pm Rescuers report safe carbon monoxide and methane levels 4,800ft from mine’s entrance

TUESDAY

4.30am Hole drilled to provide fresh air to miners
7.40am (approx) Air-quality tests thought to be “discouraging”
9.10pm One body found
11pm First reports seem to claim 12 miners found alive. Church bells ring

WEDNESDAY

2.14am One man rescued
2.45am Reports show only one miner alive
3.10am Officials confirm only one survivor

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