Drilling Inside Utah Mine Suspended

Rescuers still cling to the hope that six trapped coal miners — will be found alive, but they are running out of time — and options — after a second mine collapse killed three among their ranks.

Officials declared it too dangerous to tunnel inside the mountain, instead pinning their hopes on a fourth hole being drilled into the mountain to look for any sign of the missing men and deliver food and water to them if they are alive.

"Is there any possible way we can continue this underground operation and provide safety for the rescue workers? At this point we don't have an answer," federal Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard Stickler said Friday as he announced that officials had suspended the rescue operation indefinitely.

Three rescue workers were killed and six injured in Thursday night's collapse. Rescuers working beneath 2,000 feet of sandstone had dug more than 800 feet over 10 days, with about 1,200 feet left to go, when they were hit with the huge blast.

The cave-in at 6:39 p.m. was believed to be caused by a "mountain bump," shifting layers of earth. Coal flew from the reinforced walls with a force Stickler said could break a 40-ton mining machine in half.

Rescuers frantically dug out the injured men, buried under 5 feet of coal, by hand and rushed them from the mine on the beds of pickup trucks. One died at the scene, said Kevin Stricklin, MSHA's administrator for coal mine safety.

"Without question, we have suffered a setback, and we have incurred an incredible loss. But this team remains focused on the task at hand" — the rescue of the miners, said Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine.

With the tunneling on hold, all hope for the six missing miners was with a drill crew that worked through the night on a fourth bore hole. Stricklin said early Saturday the drill was 1,400 feet down and had another 187 feet to go.

"We're making good progress," Stricklin said.

Rescuers will send signals down the hole and lower another camera, hoping for any sign of the six men who have been missing sicne Aug. 6. Drilling from above remained the only option after Thursday's collapse.

Gov. Jon Huntsman, who ordered flags lowered to half staff, continued to call the effort a "rescue operation," but said the digging would not resume until workers' safety could be guaranteed. "Let us ensure that we have no more injuries. We have suffered enough as a state," he said.

President Bush called Huntsman on Friday afternoon to express his condolences for those who died or were injured in the mine rescue. "He wanted the governor and the people of Utah to know that they are in his thoughts and prayers," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

Two of the dead were identified as MSHA inspector Gary Jensen, 53, of Redmond, and miner Dale Black, 48, of Huntington.

Jensen had worked at MSHA since 2001 and recently was assigned to special investigations, agency spokeswoman Amy Louviere said. A cousin of Black, Kerry Allred, is one of the missing miners, relatives said.

Black had been promoted the day before and should have been outside working as a rescue manager, cleaning up and supplying materials to workers deep inside the collapsed, his brother, Guy Black, said.

"That's Dale. He wouldn't have let his guys go in without him," Guy Black said.

Mexico's consul in Salt Lake City, Salvador Jimenez, said he spoke with Huntsman and urged him to continue the rescue effort. While experts need to study the best way to do it safely, "this effort should not be interrupted," Jimenez said. Three of the six men still trapped are Mexican nationals.

Stickler said any further rescue efforts would have to involve drilling a bore hole large enough to fit a rescue capsule, which would take more than two weeks.

Despite the long odds, mining experts predicted that colleagues of the missing men will do everything in their power to get them out, however long it takes.

"It's a brotherhood. If they were in there, they would want somebody to come back and recover them," said Bob Ferriter, a former MSHA engineer who teaches safety at the Colorado School of Mines. Leaving the six men in the coal mine "would be the last option," he said.

Miners have been left underground before. In 1968, a mine explosion in Farmington, W.Va., killed 78 miners. The bodies of 19 were not recovered.

The Scotia Mine in Kentucky was sealed after a March 1976 accident that killed 26. Rescuers concluded the risk of additional explosions was too high. And 12 men killed in the 1959 Knox Mine disaster in Pennsylvania were never recovered.

A neighbor to one of the trapped miners, Sue Ann Martell, said rescue workers will not give up easily.

"If they were in there and they were the original six, they'd want to know somebody was coming after them, and they wouldn't want them to give up," said Martell, director of a mining history museum in nearby Helper, Utah.