"We found the two miners that we were looking for for the past 40-some hours. ... Unfortunately, we don't have a positive outcome," said Doug Conaway, West Virginia's mine safety chief, reports Reuters correspondent Jacque O'Bryant from Charleston, West Virginia.

Rescue crews were unable to get to the two men in time because of the heat of the fire, said Jesse Cole of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA.

The accident was the second this month at a West Virginia coal mine to claim the lives of miners. Three weeks ago, 12 men were killed at the Sago mine.

Rescuers had been searching for almost two days at the Aracoma Mine in Melville, West Virginia, where a fire broke out late on Thursday afternoon. Nineteen miners escaped the fire, which mine officials finally contained on Saturday.

The blaze had resisted firefighting efforts and spread from mine equipment into the coal seam itself, further complicating efforts hampered by thick smoke and roof collapses.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said in a televised news conference the two missing men had begun work at the Aracoma Mine at the same time five years ago.

He identified them as Don Bragg, 33, a married father of two from Accoville, West Virginia, and Ellery "Elvis" Hatfield, 47, a married father of four from Simon, West Virginia.

The mine is owned by Aracoma Coal Co., a subsidiary of Richmond, Virginia-based Massey Energy Co., according to a MSHA database. Massey's Web site says it is the fourth-largest U.S. coal company by revenue.

Widows from the Sago tragedy had come to the Aracoma Mine to lend their support. Manchin said Sago would have been on the minds of the Aracoma miners and said he planned to make a statement involved "bold steps" about mine safety after the Aracoma situation was resolved.

"I am committed. ... My goal is not to have one accident and one fatality," Manchin said. "I just think we need a little bit more, I'm going to say a lot more, of a direction, to make that happen."

"No family should have to go through what we've been going through," he said.

The only survivor of the Sago blast, 26-year-old Randal McCloy, has been hospitalized since, having survived nearly 42 hours underground following the blast.