Crews Drilling 4th Hole in Hunt for Miners

By William M. Welch

HUNTINGTON, Utah — Rescue crews were drilling a fourth hole Thursday as they continued a desperate search to find six miners trapped inside the Crandall Canyon Mine, federal and mine officials said.

More seismic shocks deep inside the mine overnight slowed efforts by crews to tunnel their way through the main entrance, mine co-owner Robert Murray said. The entrance was filled with coal and rock by an Aug. 6 collapse of mine walls.

At the same time rescue crews have been drilling from the surface and lowering cameras into the drill holes to look for signs of life. Rescue crews moved a drilling rig into position Thursday on the surface of the mountain above the mine to start their fourth hole in 11 days. It could take two days for the drill to reach its target, Murray said.

Small shocks Thursday morning slowed the tunneling, Murray said. Rescue crews dug only 26 feet overnight Wednesday and the tunneling remains at least 1,200 feet from where the men are believed to be.

Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard Stickler said there had been no further indications of sound from inside the mine that could be linked to the miners. Late Wednesday, geophone sensors placed on the surface of the mountain had detected “indications of noise” on graphs recorded by monitoring equipment, and it could be from the miners, Stickler said.

Calculations of the geophone recordings prompted rescue crews to locate the fourth drill hole over a spot inside the mine where the noise or vibrations may have been coming from. Stickler said the technology allowed engineers to pinpoint a vertical plane where it was coming from but that they were unable to determine for certain if it was coming from the coal seam, where miners could be located, or above it.

The drilling is an effort to locate the men; any rescue must come through the tunnel being dug, Murray said.

Murray released more videotape recorded through a camera placed in the No. 3 drill hole, which entered the back of the mine where Stickler said the miners may have gone after the initial shocks.

That videotape showed an open cavity but no evidence the miners had been there. Air readings showed 15% to 16% oxygen levels, lower than normal atmosphere but enough to breathe, Murray said.

“I don’t think we saw evidence of the miners in either hole,” Stickler said, referring to the two most recent holes that produced videotaped scenes this week. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.