New hole shows no sign of six trapped miners in Utah

HUNTINGTON, Utah -- 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 has been halted since 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.

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

Stickler said a fifth hole was planned.

"As long as we have hope, we will continue working and doing everything we can. Our goal is to find these miners alive," 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."

Even if rescuers found any of the six miners alive -- 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. 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.

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 daily briefings had to be moved from a junior high school because classes start next week.

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.

Kristin Kimber said a survivor's relative told her that her ex-husband threw himself on another worker, shielding him from the violent cave-in.

"The young man's mother-in-law came to me and said he told her that Brandon laid upon him and took most of the debris," Kristin Kimber said in an interview Saturday.

"People need to know this man did this instinctively -- there was never another thought," she said. "That just goes to show you what kind of character he had. He never thought of himself."

A banner reading "Please pray for our friends" was hanging outside James Stowe's porch. He worked with Black and Manuel Sanchez, one of the trapped miners, at other mines.

"If they'd let me go in, I'd go. There's a bunch of us that would," Stowe said. "I haven't given up hope yet. I think a lot of them are smart enough to take care of each other and make it."

Funeral services for Black were set for Tuesday at the Little Bear Campground in Huntington Canyon, not far from where he died.

Funeral arrangements for Jensen and Kimber were unclear.