Huntington, Utah – Six coal miners caught in a cave-in may never be found and could forever be lost to the still-quivering mountain, officials conceded Sunday, abandoning the optimism they’ve maintained publicly for nearly two weeks.
Relatives responded by accusing federal officials and the mine’s owners of leaving the men for dead.
“We feel that they’ve given up and that they are just waiting for the six miners to expire,” said Sonny Olsen, a spokesman for the families, reading a statement as about 70 relatives of the miners stood behind him.
Air readings from a fourth hole drilled more than 1,500 feet into the mountainside found insufficient oxygen to support life, and the latest efforts to signal the men met with silence.
“It’s likely these miners may not be found,” said Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine.
Workers started Sunday on a fifth borehole into the mountain, more than 2,000 feet down.
The news marked a shift in tone in mine officials’ assessments of the chances the men would be rescued, hopes they had maintained even after three rescuers were killed and six more hurt Thursday in another “bump” inside the mountain.
The families of the missing miners demanded that rescuers immediately begin drilling a 30-inch hole into which a rescue capsule could be lowered.
Christopher Van Bever, an attorney for Murray Energy, said the company had no immediate response. A spokesman for the federal Mining Safety and Health Administration did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
“We are here at the mercies of the officials in charge and their so-called experts,” Olsen said.
A rescue capsule was used in 2002 to pluck nine trapped miners from the flooded Quecreek mine in western Pennsylvania. But those miners were only about 230 feet below the surface, and the drilling took place on a gently rolling dairy farm.
There has been little evidence that the six miners survived the initial Aug. 6 collapse. Workers have gained limited access to the mine through four boreholes into which video cameras and microphones were lowered.
Engineering experts gathered at the mine Sunday to try to figure out a safe way of reaching the missing men. Underground tunneling has been halted since Thursday’s deaths, and Moore expressed doubt that the effort would resume.
“We just simply cannot take the unacceptable risk and put additional lives in harm’s way,” he said.
“Our thoughts and our prayers and our deepest sympathies go out to the families – for all those families involved in the two tragedies here,” Moore said.
