Exhaustion and miscommunications were the reasons behind the false news about finding 12 trapped coal miners alive, says the company's president.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

The mistaken information last night that 12 of 13 miners trapped in a West Virginia coal mine had been saved, when in fact 12 were dead and only one was alive, came through a series of miscommunications among rescue workers and others exhausted from more than 30 hours of searching, and desperate for a good ending to a tragic situation, the president of the mining company said this afternoon.

"They were looking desperately for good information; they wanted to share it," said Bennett K. Hatfield, the chief executive of International Coal Group, the mine's owner, expressing regret that at the moment when the bodies and the one survivor were found, the strict communication protocols set up by officials to relay accurate information to the families seemed to fall by the wayside.

"I don't think anyone had a clue how much damage was about to be created," he said, his voice breaking several times in his presentation. "In the jubilation of the moment, the rules didn't hold."

He took some responsibility for not setting the record straight for two hours, saying company officials and state and federal authorities wanted to make sure of their facts about how many people had actually survived the explosion so as to not add to the families' grief.

"In the process of being cautious, we allowed the jubilation to go on longer than we should have," he said.