Mine Crews Struggle To Drill Relief Holes

(CBS/AP)  Rescue crews clinging to a mountainside struggled Wednesday to drill two narrow holes — one just 2½ inches across, the other less than 9 inches — in a painfully slow effort to bring air and food to six miners trapped in a cave-in.

Officials held out hope that the men survived Monday's thunderous collapse and that the emergency supplies would help keep them alive while other rescuers tried to punch their way through the rubble in the mine shaft and bring them out.

The crews drilling the two parallel relief holes made encouraging progress Wednesday and could break through by Friday, said Bob Murray, chairman of mine co-owner Murray Energy Corp.

"I consider this to be very, very good news," he said. But it could take at least seven days to actually reach the men and bring them out, Murray said.

The drilling of the relief holes involved boring an extraordinary 1,500 feet straight down, or 150 stories into the earth, through hard sandstone — a task that required precise alignment of the drill and posed the constant risk of a broken bit.

Nothing has been heard from the men since the cave-in, not even the hammering on the ceiling that miners are trained to do in an emergency.

The parallel effort to clear a path inside the blocked mine suffered a major setback Tuesday when seismic shocks wiped out all progress in removing rubble.

Murray offered no estimate on how long the miners could survive — that is, if they are still alive — but backed off a claim Tuesday that they could subsist for perhaps weeks on available air.

"The oxygen depends on the size of the cavity they are in, and I have no idea what size that cavity is," he said Wednesday.

The task illustrated the specific dangers associated with the type of deep mining practiced in the West, where the terrain is rougher than it is in Appalachia and the coal mines are dug far, far deeper into the earth.

Murray's Crandall canyon mine has had 324 safety violations in the past four years, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone. But violations can be as minor as a misplaced wrench, and it's not uncommon for mines to have hundreds of citations. Only violations that present an imminent danger of injury or death can get a mine closed down, and Crandall Canyon had none of those.

Over the past few days, the rescuers had to bulldoze 8,000 feet of road across the wilderness and use a helicopter to bring in heavy equipment. They had to balance their drilling rig on a 23-degree mountainside. And then they had to begin boring 1,500 feet straight down into the earth.

The circumstances made the rescue operation "extremely hard, one of the toughest we've had to deal with," said Allyn Davis, who oversees Western mine safety operations for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

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[MarianoApologeticus]

nothappyatall,

EvilBible.com is Dead

Large portions of evilbible.com have been considered, dissected and declared
fallacious on very many levels.
Two examples of this fact are as follows:

Whilst besmirching the Bible for allegedly commanding rape evilbible.com,
for some odd reason, neglects to mention the most relevant biblical text
related to the biblical view of and law about rape. Why this omission? Who
knows, but it would certainly have gotten in the way of a good session of
emotive expression of prejudice-it would have discredited evilbible.com to
reference this most important text. Indeed, those annoying little facts have
an annoying way of getting in the way of good fallacious assertions.

Whilst besmirching the Bible for allegedly commanding human sacrifice
evilbible.com, for some odd reason, neglects to mention that the Bible does
not command but condemns human sacrifice. Evilbible.com, for some odd
reason, neglects to mention that when the Bible reports that human
sacrifices did take place they were carried out by Gentile Pagans who were
not worshiping the God of the Bible but various false gods. When "Jews" were
performing human sacrifices it was only when they turned away from the God
of the Bible and joined Gentile Pagans in worshiping various false gods.
Yet, in typical militant activist atheist fashion, evilbible.com does not
condemn Gentile Pagans but only condemns the Jews.

Further evidence of this is found at this URL:

http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/07/evilbiblecom-is-dead.html

[jb01201a]

Thanks to Reagan, the Bushes and the conservative attitude towards regulation and safety,

Now its Reagans fault and he is dead. You people are fools.

[condumism]

Posted by jb01201a

This Neocon is proud of this president and this Neocon is glad you are not in government, Bye the way, fool, I don't come from the south and I think you are a fool.

Back to my original point NEOCON! Beaurocrats that have come into government since 1981 care about nothing more than their retirement. These self-centered pigs, such as YOURSELF, could care less about the regulations put in place to level the playing field between big and small business, but only care about their retirement! Only a moron educated in the US public education system since Ronald Reagan destroyed public education in America would still be confused by my statements, such as yourself, an oblivious NEOCON NAZI LOVER!

[jb01201a]

Well lookie here:
Thanks the Gods for NEOCONS such as yourself, who's published ignorance guarantees the Democrats will not only win the presidency in 2008,

This Neocon is proud of this president and this Neocon is glad you are not in government, then we me a commni state. But this facist is still glad George and Dick are in the white house.

Bye the way, fool, I don't come from the south and I think you are a fool.

[condumism]

Posted by rightrevtodd

Thank God for Fred Thompson. He will be the savior of this country. He is the only one who can beat hillary and that guy who wants to bomb pakistan.

Thanks the Gods for NEOCONS such as yourself, who's published ignorance guarantees the Democrats will not only win the presidency in 2008, but will also control the US Congress for at least the next 2 generations. KEEP IT UP NEOCONS! after 26 years the USA is finally seeing you folk ro what you all are: AMERICA'S SOUTHERN INBRED'S!

[rightrevtodd]

Thank God for Fred Thompson. He will be the savior of this country. He is the only one who can beat hillary and that guy who wants to bomb pakistan.

[condumism]

jb01201 a SOUTHERN NEOCON posted:
The latter, spinless beaurocrats only concerned about their retirement, is what we get with a conservative fascist gocvernment.

Only a SOUHTERN NEOCON would try to refute my remarks, which are based upon facts, the number one enemy of the neocon FASCIST slim machine of hate and slander towards any facts that get in your way. You're an obvious self-centered moron, same as all of you Group Of Pigs! Nowhere did I infer your hero GW Bush in my comments. All of you NEOCONS are fascists, not just the pigs that you elect to public office. If you hate America so much, GET OUT, YOU SELF-CENTERED FASCCIST PIG!

[jb01201a]

Well lookie here;
Another stupid lib remark:
. The latter, spinless beaurocrats only concerned about their retirement, is what we get with a conservative fascist gocvernment.
Did Georgie and Dickie do "pearl harbor" as well ?
You people on the left are stupid and sick as well. Yet somehow, these events are always pointed towards Georgie ! Amazing!

[nothappyatall]

" She also said there was no interpreter for three Spanish-speaking families."

This is the USA, if you want to live and work here then freaking LEARN ENGLISH!!! I'm tired of these moron foreigners coming in here expecting US to change street signs, print bi-lingual krap for them and otherwise bow down to them because they refuse to LEARN English.
The interpretor shold tell those 3 familes in Spanish; "go learn English and then we will fill you in on the mine accident"

[condumism]

Hope this has a happy ending! But in today's FASCIST USA, a capitalistic free-for-all, where the self-centered *** who have controlled the US government for the past 25 years expected voluntary compliance of health and safety in the workplace and NO REGULATION, I fear the worst for these poor souls and their families. Voluntary compliance of safety and health only works for those. that can afford to know how to accomplish such, ie: HUGE CORPORATIONS. The playing field will never be level for the small businees man such as this mining operation in Utah. Only with federal regulations and beaurocrats with backbone to enforce such regs wil small and big business be able to compete side-by-side. The latter, spinless beaurocrats only concerned about their retirement, is what we get with a conservative fascist gocvernment.