The Faces of Sago

Late last night on the flight back home, Elizabeth Vargas wrote about the things she saw and heard while reporting in West Virginia:It’s almost a cliche today to say that small towns are tight-knit groups, but it couldn’t be more true of the town of Buckhannon and the whole of Upshire County. It is pretty here… rolling hills, tiny homes tucked away. We spent some time in town and everyone was in shock, very angry over the events that unfolded early this morning. Many people, like Lynette Roby, had heard over the Internet late last night that the miners were alive, that, in short, a miracle had happened. She woke up her three young kids, dressed them and took them to the Baptist Church where first families, and then later the entire town, it seems, turned out… waiting to see their beloved miners emerge. Lynette’s description of the scene inside, when after three hours of hymns and prayers of thanks, the announcement came that there was just one survivor, was chilling. Sheer pandemonium. Police restraining furious families, some of whom refused to believe the terrible news. I will never forget the stunned looks on the faces of these people even hours later, as they absorbed their communal tragedy. Or, what my colleague Chris Cuomo saw as he waited outside the church early this morning, when the people inside still believed their fathers, husbands and sons were alive: a little boy, anxiously peering out in the dark, asking when Daddy was going to come back from the mine.