Huntington, Utah – The latest hole drilled into a collapsed mine where six men are trapped broke through an area too small for the men to survive, an attorney for several of the men’s families said Saturday.
“The only thing they told us is there is no void where the sixth hole is; there is no space,” attorney Colin King said after a meeting between the families and mine officials.
King said the families were disappointed by the news. “They are distraught. They’re very frustrated, for good reason,” he said.
Crandall Canyon Mine’s co-owner has said this hole, the sixth drilled more than 1,500 feet into the mountain, will be the last effort to find a sign of the men, who may not have survived the massive cave-in Aug. 6.
However, King said, mine officials did not rule out the possibility of drilling a seventh hole.
Drilling on the sixth hole was completed late Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Labor said, reaching a depth of more than 1,700 feet. Department of Labor spokesman Matthew Faraci said the same testing done on previous holes – air samples, signaling in hopes of a response from the miners and dropping a video camera into the mine shaft – would be done. An update was expected this afternoon.
Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, said he had no comment on the initial findings from the sixth hole.
Previous holes have yielded only grainy video images and poor air samples, and efforts to signal the miners have been met with silence. Tunneling into the mine was abandoned after another collapse killed three rescue workers and injured six others Aug. 16.
Families and friends of the missing miners have pressed for the efforts to continue, if only to find the bodies of Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez.
It has never been clear whether the men survived the initial cave-in.
