4th hole reveals no signs of life

Officials were to meet with family members to tell them what the camera saw.

HUNTINGTON, Utah (AP) — Rescuers found no signs of life Saturday after drilling a fourth hole into a collapsed mine where six workers have been trapped nearly two weeks, a disheartening blow in a rescue effort that has killed three other people.

A microphone lowered into the new hole revealed nothing to indicate that anyone was in the cavern, and attempts to communicate with the miners by tapping on a drill bit yielded no response, a federal official said. A video camera was being lowered into the hole overnight.

Underground tunneling had been halted after a mountain “bump” Thursday killed three rescuers and injured six others. Officials had hoped a fourth hole drilled into the mine would finally offer clues to whether the men were alive 1,500 feet below ground. Instead, the results were the same as the three previous tries.

“We did not detect any signals from miners underground,” said Richard Stickler, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Stickler said a fifth hole was planned.

Crews spent at least four hours beating on the drill steel and setting off explosives to try to get the miners’ attention, he said.

Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, remained optimistic.

“Make no mistake about it: This continues to be a rescue effort,” Moore said. “We have encountered setbacks. We’ve incurred losses, but we have not and will not give up hope.”

Would take weeks

But even if rescuers find signs of life — an increasingly unlikely prospect, given the amount of time elapsed — it would take weeks to lift them out.

Crews would have to drill a much larger, 30-inch hole and lower a metal rescue capsule, the same method used in 2002 to pluck nine trapped miners from the flooded Quecreek mine in western Pennsylvania. But there are key differences between Quecreek and Crandall Canyon that would make the effort far more complicated.

At Quecreek, rescue workers heard tapping sounds only six-and-a-half hours after the miners became trapped, indicating at least some of them were alive. Work began on the rescue shaft later that day, and the whole ordeal was over in 77 hours. It has been nearly two weeks since the cave-in at Crandall Canyon, with no sign of the missing men.

The miners in Pennsylvania were only about 230 feet below the surface, and the drilling took place on a gently rolling dairy farm. The Utah miners are believed to be more than 1,500 feet beneath the surface, with drillers having to work atop a steep sandstone cliff.

MSHA has broached the idea of a rescue capsule to Murray Energy Corp., the mine’s co-owner. A rescue capsule is in the vicinity and the mining company had its engineers examine the road up the mountain “to find out exactly what they need for the road to support a 30-inch drill,” said Kevin Stricklin, chief of coal mine safety for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Only way to get them out

Now that tunneling has stopped, a rescue capsule is the only way of getting the miners out.

“If it’s the only option you have, you make it work,” Stricklin said.

As the drilling crew did its work Saturday, officials from MSHA and the mining company briefed family members who had gathered at a nearby church.

The three victims of Thursday’s mountain “bump” were identified as MSHA inspector Gary Jensen, 53, of Redmond; miner Dale Black, 48, of Huntington; and Brandon Kimber, 29, a miner from Price.