blaze? reporter: not at all. they say they re investigating and say they re not ruling anything out, including any kind of criminal activity. but yeah, i mean, everyone s just completely puzzled. the building wasn t that old and they don t know what happened. and i think there s so many people in this town who live so close, they could hear the screams, anderson, from the older people. so many people went over to the building to try and help, but in the end were overcome by smoke. other people tried to help taking people to the hospital. i mean, the town is completely in shock, and now they ve got this work ahead of them just to try and figure out how many people actually perished. just awful. i understand that they had smoke detectors in the rooms, but only water sprinklers in parts. reporter: yeah. i mean, the building was in two separate areas. thank goodness there was a fire wall between two buildings, but wares learning now, one side of the building had sprinklers, which mea
this was a preventible accident. an accident that was manmade. it was not preordained. reporter: the majority of the blame is directed at the mine owner, massey energy, and its then-ceo, don blankenship who told diane sawyer he always puts safety before production. but when you employ 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 people you do your best to protect all of them. reporter: but the report calls that just a slogan that massey blatantly and. water sprinklers were ineffective. there wasn t enough ventilation to carry away dangerous gas and the company let highly combustible coal dust build up. all touched off by a small spark. the company continues to claim it was a massive gas release that caused the explosion, not a lack of safety precautions. last year after the explosion, diana davis told david muir of her loss. and we just miss him and we love him so much. reporter: so you lost three people in the mine?
says it is very likely that three bombs left at that inland regional center may have been intended to go off as first responders responded to the scene. they said that s a very clear indication of what happened. generally it s a hallmark of overseas attacks, i m told, with the intent to not only kill those first responders but to send a message to other first responders in other areas of the country that may have to respond to a similar scene at some point in the near future. they did not go off, of course, and there is still some question as to why not. some suggested because of the water sprinklers. others believed it may have been the failure to use the proper detonator. meantime, there were also reports that there was scanner traffic within an hour of the attacks very early on wednesday that indicated that law enforcement may have known farook. he may have been known to authorities as long as one week prior to the attack. the federal and local authorities have insisted that neither