GEORGETOWN, COLO. - When fire broke out deep underground at a hydroelectric plant in the Rockies, officials at the surface dropped a radio down to five trapped men in a tunnel and were relieved to learn they were OK. But by the time emergency crews reached them six hours later, they were dead.

On Wednesday, a day after the tragedy more than 1,500 feet underground at Xcel Corp.'s Cabin Creek power plant, investigators tried to figure out what went wrong. Crews began to remove the workers' bodies.

"We're devastated over the loss," said RPI Coating spokesman Marc Dyer. "They were very experienced guys. They were some of our best."

The five maintenance workers were using a highly flammable epoxy sealant to coat the inside of the empty, 12-foot-wide water pipeline.

The workers were identified as Donald Dejaynes, 43; Dupree Holt, 37; James St. Peters, 52; Gary Foster, 48; Anthony Aguirre, 18; all of California. Their hometowns weren't immediately available.

The men, whose bodies were found scattered along a 200-foot length of the pipe, didn't have any burn marks, indicating they probably died from the smoke and fumes from the chemical fire, Clear Creek undersheriff Stu Nay said.

Authorities said smoke, the complexities of the 4,000-foot tunnel's design and uncertainties about the dangers prevented them from going in after the men for more than 3½ hours after the blaze broke out.

The blaze erupted when a machine used by the workers to coat the tunnel with a mixture of paint and epoxy caught fire, Xcel Energy spokeswoman Ethnie Groves said.

Nay said the mixture is kept in a hopper to warm it so it will flow through a sprayer. He said the men had trouble spraying it so they added a solvent to the hopper and the hopper's heating element inadvertently turned on, igniting the vapors.

Nine employees of RPI Coating of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., had been sealing the inside of the pipe. Two others were working outside the pipe and one of them was injured when he ran back into the tunnel to help when the fire broke out.

NEWS SERVICES