Trapped U.S. Miners Still Reachless

Trapped U.S. miners still reachless UPSHUR, the United States, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) — Over 30 hours after 13 miners were trapped underground in an eastern U.S. coal mine, they are still out of the reach of the rescuers and their conditions are unknown on Tuesday.

The miners were trapped early Monday after an explosion of unknown origin took place in the Sago Mine in the Upshur County, West Virginia. They are believed to be about 80 meters below the surface at the end of an angled shaft about 4,000 meters long.

As the miners’ lives are being endangered every minute, rescuers Tuesday afternoon accelerated their efforts to locate them by starting to bore two new vertical shafts for their probes.

As of present, rescuers have penetrated 3,400 meters into the mine. They found no sign of the men, but dangerously high levels of toxic gas.

Officials declined to say when the trapped miners could be reached, saying that groundwater was slowing their efforts. Efforts also were being made to advance horizontally into the Sago Mine, gingerly testing the air every step of the way.

However, rescuers abandoned a plan to move in a camera-equipped track-mounted robot with sensors to measure air quality, after it was bogged down in mud inside the mine.

Meanwhile, some 200 people, including family members and friends of the trapped miners, waited in the Sago Baptist Church just across the mine entrance.

The absence of miners near the area of the concentrated carbon monoxide offered relatives hope that their loved ones escaped to another part of the mine.

Nick Helms, who’s 50-year-old father, Terry, is among the trapped miners, told reporters that he thought the situation is ” devastating”, but he believed that his father and other miners could use their experience to find a way to be safe.

Tom Hunter, spokesman for West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III, told Xinhua that the state government will try its best to help rescue the trapped workers and will also ask help from other states and the federal government.

In Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush pledged that the ” federal government will help the folks in West Virginia any way we can.”