Huntington, Utah – Rescue crews clinging to a mountainside struggled Wednesday to drill two narrow holes – one just 2 1/2 inches across, the other less than 9 inches – in a painfully slow effort to get 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 smaller hole was 875 feet down Wednesday evening, more than halfway to its target, said Bob Murray, chairman of mine co-owner Murray Energy Corp. The larger drill was just 20 feet down Wednesday evening but was progressing faster and was expected to catch up, said Rob Moore, Murray Energy vice president.
Crews could break through in 48 hours or less, the company said.
“Obviously we’re dealing with the unknown,” Moore said.
Equipment “has the potential of breaking down. We’re dealing with Mother Nature, but we have the expertise to make sure that the effort goes through until we reach the cavity.”
The rate of progress is “very, very good news,” Murray said earlier. But it could take at least seven days to actually reach the men and bring them out, he 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.
The smaller hole could be used to ferry a communications line into the shaft. The larger hole, being drilled with more accurate technology, could be used to move provisions to the workers. But two holes have to be drilled in case one is unsuccessful, Murray said.
“It’s very possible that when we drill down there and find the coal seam, we may have drilled into a solid block of coal rather than a cavity where the miners are,” he said.
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.
Only one miner has been identified. The men range from one miner with three weeks on the job to others with 10 years’ experience, mine safety manager Bodee Allred said.
“With a little help from God and a little luck, they’ll get out,” he said.
Murray donned miner’s gear, a hard hat with headlamp and rubber boots and entered the mine Wednesday, accompanied by the son and brother of two of the trapped men. His visit down below renewed his optimism that the miners could have enough oxygen to survive.
“There was a tremendously strong … amount of air where we were,” Murray said at an evening news conference, coal still smudging his cheeks. “I believe that is probably sweeping back in to where the miners are also.”
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.
But the underground work resumed Wednesday to remove the fallen debris blocking a 2,000-foot passageway leading to the men.
Machines were shuttling coal and rock out of the mine and then blocks of timber and steel props back in to help shore up the structure.
The task illustrated the specific dangers associated with the type of deep mining practiced in the West, where the terrain is rougher than in Appalachia and the coal mines are dug far, far deeper into the earth.
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. Then they had to begin boring 1,500 feet straight down.
By contrast, the Quecreek mine in Somerset, Pa., where nine miners became trapped in a flood in 2002, was just 240 feet below ground, and it took rescuers 77 hours to reach the men. The Sago mine in West Virginia where 12 were killed in an ex plosion last year was 260 feet down.
“Drilling through that hard sandstone is going to take a while. In West Virginia, Pennsylvania, it’s easier to get to and you don’t have to drill as far. Back there drilling a 300-foot hole is a few hours’ worth of work,” said Bob Ferriter, mine safety and health program manager at the Colorado School of Mines. “Here, getting that drilling rig to top of a mesa through that hard sandstone, that’s a more monumental task.”
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.
The Crandall Canyon mine is built into steep sandstone cliffs in the Manti-La Sal National Forest, 140 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Murray spoke to reporters Wednesday after meeting with the miners’ families at a school in Huntington, 10 miles away. At one point, he left the building, paced outside and returned.
Maria Buenrostro, the sister of trapped miner Manuel Sanchez, 41, said Murray got angry with relatives’ questions and walked out.
She also said there was no interpreter for three Spanish- speaking families.
“We want the truth, that’s all we want,” said Buenrostro, 40. “If there’s nothing that they can do about it, you know, just tell us so we know what to expect when they bring them out.”
Murray said the families had thanked him.
“You can’t make everybody happy,” he said. “In a trauma like this, as the days wear on, tensions become more and more. I have been truthful with them.”
