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Mine size vs. S.L. Valley Despite Bob Murray's loud denials, his company is on record with the Utah Geological Survey that removing pillar supports has been going on in his Crandall Canyon mine since 2005 - under the former owners as well as under Murray.

Michael Vanden Berg, who writes the annual coal report for the Utah Geological Survey, said Tuesday that when he visited the Crandall Canyon mine in February while preparing the 2007 report, mine operators told him they would be "pulling pillars" with a continuous mining machine in the Hiawatha coal seam for the next few years.

While the report doesn't prove this type of "retreat" mining caused the collapse that trapped six men in Emery County, it does suggest that the company has yet to paint a complete picture of the type of work being done in the mine.

During a contentious news conference Tuesday, Murray insisted the miners had not been removing the coal pillars, a common but hazardous type of retreat mining that occurs as a mine plays out.

The 2007 coal report is complete and will be released within two weeks, Vanden Berg said. Last year's report, available on the Utah Geological Survey Web site, says Murray's company, also known as Genwal, was "currently pulling pillars in Crandall Canyon and plans to close the mine in 2008." The reports, based on voluntary questionnaires and on-site visits with mine operators, include verified information from the previous year and advance data for the current year.

Murray Energy Corporation, the largest independent, family-owned coal producer in the United States, last August acquired the Crandall Canyon mine when it bought Andalex Resources and four subsidiaries. Crandall has been cited repeatedly for mine safety violations over the last dozen years.

U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration overview of injuries, citations and orders does not break out Crandall violations for the last quarter of 2006. But during the first three months of this year, the mine received 32 citations and orders based on mine safety violations. Mine safety records also show that three worker-days were lost to mine injuries during that period.

Vanden Berg emphasized that while Crandall mine operators in February said their plan for the entire year was to retreat mine, that didn't mean they would only pull pillars.

Richard Strickler, the Bush-appointed Assistant Secretary for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, acknowledged Tuesday that the men working the Hiawatha seam in the Crandall Canyon mine had been retreat mining but couldn't say if the trapped miners were doing so at the time of the collapse Monday or whether retreat mining in the past could have led to the collapse.

Coal operators generally progress from longwall mining for the most accessible ore to continuous mining with a remote-controlled machine that grinds coal out of a grid of "rooms" supported by coal pillars and long bolts drilled into the mine roof. The Crandall mine was a longwall operation until last August, when Murray bought it.

During retreat mining, the continuous mining machine and the miners withdraw toward the mine portal, grabbing more coal and the pillars along the way. Miners call this "cut-and-gut." The machine gathers the coal and conveys it into a shuttle car, a kind of large truck that in turn conveys the coal onto the belt line that takes the ore to the mine portal.

Intentional cave-ins follow the miners as they retreat. This can take minutes or a day. As the pillars are pulled, the pressure is relieved in an earthquakelike shift and settling. That's called the "bounce."

Jameson Ward, one of the miners who escaped, donned rescue gear and tried to go after the six trapped men, said Tuesday of the collapse, "It was a bounce. Bad things happen. Nothing can be done about it."

Sometimes the mine doesn't cave in as it is supposed to. That can destabilize the mine shaft in a kind of teeter-totter way that puts extra pressure on the shaft between the miners and the portal and secondary escape route. The pressure can cause an unplanned cave-in at a weak point.

Tuesday evening, Murray again said an earthquake was to blame for the collapse. But Rafael Abreu, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, said a seismic event recorded at 2:48 a.m. was a mine collapse, not an earthquake.

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* Tribune reporter DONALD W. MEYERS contributed to this story.