Sunday, August 19, 2007

The miners - Don Erickson, Manuel Sanchez, Kerry Allred, Luis Hernandez, Brandon Phillips
and Juan Carlos Payan - were trapped at least 3- miles into the mine tunnel early Aug. 6 by an even larger collapse that left perhaps 2,500 feet of coal blocking the tunnel.
The mine rescuers had removed about a third of that rubble before Thursday's collapse led MSHA to suspend indefinitely the attempt to reach the miners by the underground tunnel.
A team of experts from around the country is expected to begin meeting at the mine this morning to determine whether there is a way to safely resume underground mining amid continuing shifts of the mountain rock above Crandall Canyon mine.
"We have encountered setbacks. We have incurred losses. But we have not and will not give up hope," Moore said, his voice shaking.
Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department and head of the MSHA, said the miners very well could survive this long without food.
The mine has water and, at least at the back end where the miners may have fled, enough oxygen to barely sustain life.
Rescuers also have been pumping 5,000 cubic feet of oxygen per hour through two boreholes for several days.
If survivors are found, rescuers will drop food and water until a rescue can be arranged via an enclosed capsule dropped through an even larger hole, if not through the underground tunnel.
Murray Mining, the Ohio-based parent company of UtahAmerican Energy Inc., co-owner of the mine, has a pad in place to begin drilling a fifth hole in an area not yet checked.
Saturday night, rescuers were dropping a high-resolution camera down the fourth, 1,587-foot borehole at the back end of the mine where the miners might have fled. If the camera confirms what the microphone and geophones placed on the surface found Saturday - no sign of life - air monitors will be dropped in and the drill rig moved to the fifth borehole.
It will go in at crosscut 133 in the mine, about 600 feet from where the miners were working on Aug. 6 and toward the tunnel opening.
It has been taking roughly two days to drill the holes, which measure nearly 9 inches in diameter.
Moore said Saturday night that the company has on standby two drills capable of making a 30-inch borehole - a process that could take two weeks or more. One of those drills is in Utah, he said.
It would take a hole that big to drop in an enclosed capsule that could carry a man to the surface of the mountain.
Tension over the lack of news from the mine showed on the faces of occupants of a steady stream of pickup trucks and cars that passed by the sheriff's command post at the entry to the mine in Huntington Canyon on Saturday.
Customers watching the news conference on television at Grogg's Pinnacle Brewing Co. in Helper had hoped for better news.
"It's disappointing. You always want to hear good news . . . noises, sounds, anything from the miners," said Paul Burdis of Price, a miner at West Ridge mine near Price.
Price business owner John Giacotello said people naturally want the rescue effort to move more quickly but that it will take time. "They're doing as good a job as they can do with the limited amount of information they have," he said.
The pair were joined by Price's Levi Howell, also a miner at West Ridge mine, in saying mining officials should not resume underground rescue efforts after the deaths of the three miners.
One rescuer was in serious condition with broken bones at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
Another was in fair condition at University Hospital, also with broken bones. Castleview Hospital in Price did not release the condition Saturday of the last rescuer remaining there.
At the Desert Edge Christian Chapel in Huntington, children played with a football outside while families of the trapped miners were briefed by mine company and MSHA officials late Saturday afternoon.
Earlier Saturday, a minor earthquake registering a 3.9 magnitude shook an area near Minersville, 150 miles from the coal mine. Scientists say the seismic activity in the Crandall Canyon mine is related to the mining.
Murray has insisted from the beginning that an earthquake triggered that first collapse.
--- Roxana Orellana and Nate Carisle contributed to this report.

Not cave related, but I am sure some or all of you may be interested-! MOD's you can move this if you deem necessary.

JE