Reasons to Hope — Video Shows Utah Mine Ceiling Holding Up

By Jens Dana Deseret Morning News

HUNTINGTON, Emery County — Video released Monday from a camera sent underground to seek six men trapped inside Crandall Canyon Mine showed some equipment, including a tool bag hanging from a post, dripping water and a ceiling that was holding strong.

But there was no sign of miners Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Arturo “Manuel” Sanchez.

“I’m very disappointed to be telling you on the eighth day we have not found the trapped miners,” Bob Murray, president of mine owner Murray Energy Corp., said during a Monday news conference. But, he said, the video gives family members, the community and nation “many, many reasons to hope.”

The video showed a slow, deliberate plunge into the darkness of the mountain. As the camera entered the mine cavern, it passed wire mesh that is typically used to prevent small debris from falling on miners, explained Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy.

“The roof is intact and competent,” he said. “It’s holding.”

Murray added that because the roof didn’t cave in on the miners, who have been trapped since Aug. 6, there is “much volume for the trapping of air to support their lives.”

At a Monday night news conference, Murray reiterated that if the miners survived the initial collapse, “there are many reasons to believe they are still alive.”

Rescue crews, the mine owner said, began drilling a third hole of 8 5/8 inches in diameter late Monday.

“Drilling is trial and error,” Murray told reporters. “You drill a hole where you think the men are now.”

In the tunnel, the video camera only had a visibility radius of about 5 feet. Rubble and other debris lay in the background, but mine officials also saw the aqua-line, a pipe used to pump water into the mines. Murray said the water is drinkable.

Murray also expressed frustration with delays and setbacks in the rescue efforts.

“The process is slow — too slow,” he said. “But we must not risk the lives of the rescuers.”

Crews digging a passage to the miners have advanced 680 feet, officials announced late Monday. The path is now about one-third of the way to the location where the miners were believed to have been working when the collapse trapped them Aug. 6.

Richard Stickler, assistant U.S. labor secretary over the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said mine officials have been asking one question since the rescue efforts began more than a week ago: Where would the miners most likely go?

He re-emphasized that a 2 1/2-inch hole was drilled with the intent to make contact as quickly as possible. The drill didn’t have a high degree of directional control, he said, so they didn’t have a lot of confidence the drill would hit its target. It ended up missing the intended area by 87 feet.

“But we’re lucky,” he said. “That hole could have gone to the east or west into a pillar.”

Rescuers didn’t make audio contact with the trapped miners, so they chose a different location where they believed the miners would go. This second hole landed within 2 feet of the targeted area but didn’t find the miners. So, Stickler said they’ve asked themselves once again where the miners would have gone.

Stickler said air samples indicate there is a pocket of air with sufficient oxygen near crosscut 147, about 1,300 feet away from the second hole.

“That’s where we think the miners went,” he said.

Stickler said they have no timeline for when a third hole to that area will be completed. Based on what they learn from the third hole, they might drill a fourth.

As rescuers drill the third hole, they will continue to pump 2,000 cubic feet of pressurized air into the mine using the first hole, Stickler said.

Regarding underground efforts to clear a path to the miners horizontally, work has been slow, he said.

“We continue to work very hard,” he said. “The crews are enthusiastic. Morale is high. We continue to work as a team.”

Murray said 12 rescue team members have requested to be moved from the underground rescue efforts to other functions in the process.

“They have been somewhat frightened to work there,” he said. But if he or MSHA had any concerns about safety, they would not undertake the underground effort, he added.

Moore said they will continue to use every means possible to retrieve the trapped miners.

“Our focus remains on this rescue effort,” he said. “Let me repeat that. This is a rescue mission.”

Meanwhile, one of four miners who got out of the collapsing mine said he didn’t feel or hear a thing as the mountain shook and caved in.

Tim Curtis was near the mine’s entrance on Aug. 6 when he got a text message on his PED, or personal emergency device, telling him of the collapse. The trapped men are believed to be about 3.4 miles from the mine’s entrance.

“Where I was at, I felt nothing,” Curtis said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s just like you are here and three miles away are you going to hear a balloon pop?”

The three other men who escaped the mine unharmed were also believed to be relatively close to the entrance.

The cause of the collapse has not been officially established. Murray has insisted it was caused by an earthquake, but seismologists say there was no earthquake and that readings on seismometers actually came from the collapse.

Curtis, 33, a third-generation miner who works as a mine fire boss, or safety inspector, has worked 12-hour shifts every day since the collapse to aid the rescue effort.

Murray said the families of the miners showed great strength as they viewed the latest video Monday morning at Canyon View Junior High School.

“They’re holding up better than you could imagine,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking that we haven’t found them alive, … but we have spared nothing.”

A family member of one miner gave a note to the Rev. Don Hope during a meeting Monday. The message, written in Spanish and translated by Christopher Gray of the Intermountain Catholic, was directed toward all those who have helped in the search for the miners.

“Many times have I asked of my God that he may allow me to see an angel, and never had I seen one — and I say ‘had seen’ because now I see many, and although with my eyes I cannot see their wings, I can with my heart,” the note read. “You, all the people who are helping us, are angels who God put along our paths to remind us that he is very great — and even greater — because of all this which is happening to us, and that he would never by any means leave us alone.

“I believe we have said this so many times, but it is all that comes to my mind and expresses, from the bottom of my heart, what I feel.”

Contributing: The Associated Press; Ben Winslow and Dennis Romboy, Deseret Morning News

E-mail: jdana@desnews.com

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