‘It Has Not Gone Well’

By Pat Reavy and Jens Dana Deseret Morning News

HUNTINGTON — Sunday was another day of slow progress in the search for six miners believed to be trapped nearly 1,900 feet underground in Crandall Canyon Mine as the community continued to hold out hope their loved ones are still alive.

Today marks day eight since miners Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Arturo “Manuel” Sanchez were trapped in a cave-in.

Officials said Sunday they would be drilling a third hole to where they believe the six miners are trapped.

“It has not gone well,” said Bob Murray, Murray Energy Corp. president, of the horizontal drilling that rescuers have conducted in an effort to reach their mining brothers. “The reason is the conditions we are encountering. They are some of the most difficult mining conditions … that I’ve seen in all my 50 years of mining.”

But the mine owners continued to say Sunday, as they have since day one, that they are discouraged but not defeated.

“Our attitude is we always have to have hope. That’s the position we’re taking. We’re hoping and we’re praying. It would be a terrible mistake to give up hope until you know for sure,” said Richard Stickler, the assistant U.S. Labor secretary over MSHA.

“Of course this is a rescue mission. We’re proceeding as if the men are alive. We will continue to do that until we have absolute proof as to their condition,” Murray sternly echoed. “It’s very possible they are very much alive, and that is the absolute fact.”

Residents of Huntington and some of the other nearby mining towns, including relatives of the missing miners, gathered at Mission San Rafael Catholic Church Sunday to pray for peace, comfort, strength and hope. Nearly 90 people packed into the small church. The congregation started the Mass by singing a hymn with the words, “We walk by faith and not by sight.”

The Rev. Don Hope stood in front of a simple altar with nine small candles arranged on it — six representing the trapped miners in Crandall Canyon Mine and three representing the miners who died in Indiana this past week. He said it is sometimes difficult to remember God’s love in trying times, and in those circumstances, people fail to share God’s love with one another. But he said the nation’s response to the tragedy is encouraging.

“If, in some way, we could bottle all of what’s been expressed,” he said, “If we could remember this day after day after day, we would have no worries when we are called from this life.”

After the Mass, he said the family members of the trapped miners probably feel like they are sitting in the waiting room at a hospital. As the days pass, their ability to remain upbeat becomes strained, but he encouraged them, as well as the community, to hold on to hope.

“The miners of Sago were there nine days before they were found,” he said.

Castle Dale resident Filomena Lee, a longtime member of the parish, said she knows the community is resilient enough to pull through this disaster.

“This is the strongest community there is,” she said. “No matter if you’re LDS or Catholic, we can come together.”

Lee also had strong words for Bob Murray.

“Mr. Murray is not telling us the 100 percent truth,” she said firmly. Lee’s neighbor was at the mouth of the mine when it blew out. The compression force bounced him out of the mine. Lee said he, along with her other friends, called the conditions “dangerous,” but they are afraid to speak out because it would jeopardize their jobs. But Lee said this is a time for prayer, not angry words.

“Anger gets you nowhere,” she said. She also said she is certain that if the six miners are alive, they are fending for each other.

“Once you go under the ground, you’re family,” she said. “You do whatever it takes to keep the other alive.”

Seismologists say the mine collapse was so strong it gave off seismic readings. But mine owners continued Sunday to strongly insist that it was an earthquake that caused the collapse as they defended the mine’s safety plan.

“We’ve had a once in a lifetime disaster here. This has not happened here before. They have never seen seismic activity like that,” Murray said. “This is a natural disaster that happened from seismic activity that has never been recorded in this area before.”

During a press briefing Sunday to update the status of the rescue, Stickler said the progress of digging horizontally from the mine’s main entrance to where the miners are believed to be was still going excruciatingly slow as rescuers worked not only to dig further into the mine but make sure the area they are digging through is properly secured from collapsing again. Stickler said there were two additional “bounces” inside the mine Saturday night.

“Right now we’re in the most difficult ground conditions since we started,” he said. “We know the ground conditions get better. We know at some point they’re going to improve before we reach the active area where the miners are located.”

Stickler said crews had advanced another 60 feet into the mine in the past 24 hours. He said that put them at 580 feet of the estimated 1,900 feet to where the men are believed to be. Murray had said Saturday that crews had already dug 650 feet into the mountain.

Mine officials announced Sunday they would be drilling a third hole about 1,300 feet away from where the second hole was completed. Hole No. 3, which will be 8 5/8 inches wide like the last one, will be dug into what mine officials call a “bleeder entry,” or essentially a safety room. They said it’s the second most likely spot the miners would be, or the miners’ first choice to run to after realizing all escape routes were blocked. Preparations to begin drilling that hole were expected to be completed late Sunday night, said Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp. He hoped to start drilling by early Monday. It took three days to drill the last 8 5/8-inch hole. The third hole will be 450 feet shorter than the second, Moore said.

Although the drilling has been slow, Murray defended the rescue operation Sunday, saying it has gone exactly as planned.

“We’ve had a plan underground to rescue these miners from the beginning, and we are on that plan. It was the right plan, it is a good plan,” he said. “It is the only plan.”

Also Sunday, the steel lining in the second hole was completed, and a camera was lowered into the mine. The vertical lens worked this time but showed very little because of poor lighting. The camera is designed to shoot about 100 feet, but Stickler said only 10 to 15 feet was visible because of the lighting. What the camera recorded was a tool bag of a miner hanging from the roof, a chain used to support a conveyor belt and cloth used to direct mine ventilation.

“We couldn’t identify anything specifically belonging to an individual miner,” Stickler said. “We did not see any sign at all of any of the miners.”

That video was shown Sunday morning during a 3 1/2-hour meeting with family members of the missing miners. Huntington Mayor Hillary Gordon said she also saw the video and it showed nothing. Some debris could be seen in the video but nothing that hadn’t already been shown on TV, she said. Poor lighting made it hard to see anything, Gordon said.

Gordon said, however, the families’ demeanor in the meeting was upbeat.

“They say they’re as hopeful today as they were the first day,” she said.

Close family members declined to comment, but Jose Sanchez, a cousin of Manuel Sanchez from Fort Collins, Colo., said the families expressed frustration mingled with their patience, but they are supporting each other.

“That helps our with the heartache,” he said.

Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: preavy@desnews.com; jdana@desnews.com

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.