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Methane levels inside that mine. at 2:00 a.m. eastern time, it was announced 25 miners are killed in that blast. holding on to hope at the moment for the other four. martha: meanwhile we want to give you a little perspective on just how important the mining industry is in america. let's break it down for you. nearly 400,000 people work directly in the u.s. mining industry and in fact, half of all of our electricity is generated from coal. there are approximately 1100 manufacturing facilities using coal around the united states, and joining me now is bruce wattsman, a mine safety expert. bruce,...

Violations at that mine. i wasn't really aware of it at the time. there has been some real negative publicity down there about mountaintop removal, and it was on national news and it was quite an uproar, but at a time like this, those kind of things are put aside and all the families came together and people who had been rallying against massey coal actually, some of those people were there supporting the families, because at a time like this, it's all about the men. and their families. and all the community really cares about is let's get them men outside. jon: i imagine the community has pre...

Be 2:30, 2:30 range, 2:45 when i was at the command center and they were just all being pulled out and came out at that time. the 2:30 time frame would be when they ran into the high methane levels. >> did they say they passed the 25 bodies and were looking for the four additional bodies? >> they had -- they have a body. they have a count. that count is they worked their way in and there are the four that are in the furthest part of the mine. govenor, we were told earlier that a couple of the oxygen masks were removed. is there any reason to believe -- >> we have heard that. this was a horrifi...

For those four missing miners. they had been looking for them through the middle of the night. they had hoped that they had reached one of these refuse refuge chamber where there is air, oxygen, water and food where they could survive for four days. according to officials they did not reach one of those air-tight chambers, and now rescuers cannot go down any further because the methane levels are too high, too dangerous, so they're drilling down 1,100 feet to allow ventilation for that methane gas to get out before they can get back in and search for those other four miners. mika, it's startin...

To it. he and my aunt, my parents, they were going to take a cruise to the virgin islands the end of may. he was very, very excited about that. >> let's bring in msnbc's norah o'donnell in naoma, west virginia. >> reporter: we're going to get a briefing from the governor of west virginia, governor joe manchin. i spoke with him earlier this morning. he was going to spend the last couple of hours with the family members at the site of the mine. they have suspended the rescue effort for four missing miners because they are concerned about very dangerous methane levels. of course it's a combustibl...