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Updated: 7:16 PM- HUNTINGTON -- Rescue crews on Saturday dropped a special video camera deep into central Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine, but have yet to make any contact with six miners trapped by a cave-in since early Monday.

Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of Labor over the Mine Health and Safety Administration, told reporters this afternoon that the camera was able to confirm the target cavity, some 1,500 feet deep and 3.5 miles inside the coal mine, was about 5 1/2 feet in height.

"We have found a survivable state [in terms of open space]," Stickler said, though he acknowledged attempts to signal the miners -- by pounding on the an 8 5/8-inch wide drill casing -- had been unsuccessful thus far, and air sampling had not yet determined whether sufficient oxygen exists.

Water running into the bore hole shaft obscured the camera's horizontal abilities, making it impossible to use its 360-degree, 100-foot view to see if the miners are in the cavity -- and if they are alive.

The camera was dropped into the bore hole beginning at 8:15 a.m., but was withdrawn to allow crews to install a liner sleeve in the hole to the stem the flow of water.

Once that liner is installed, "We plan to drop the camera back in, after we clean the horizontal lens," Stickler said. "That will allow us to look outside of the opening [in the cavity]."

What the camera did show was that the roof of the cavity, perhaps as big as 1,000 feet long and 80 feet wide, had not collapsed. Stickler said about 2 feet of rock and coal rubble was on the cavity's floor, apparently having sloughed off from the walls.

Stickler declined to say when the sleeve work would be done, or provide an estimate for when the camera might be relowered. However, mine owner Robert Murray said he hoped that would occur sometime late this evening.

The miners, cut off by a cave-in about 3 a.m. Monday, have not been heard from since. But Murray said the families of the missing remain hopeful.

"It's remarkable and wonderful how they are holding up," he said.

"The rescue effort itself? I'm very disappointed in its pace. [But] we've made no mistakes. What we are dealing with is nature, where the seismic forces have not yet settled down," Murray added. "We are on [target] our plans, which have been worked out together [between mine rescuers and MSHA officials].

The 8 5/8-inch bore hole, the second drilling into the mountain in an effort to communicate with the trapped miners, was completed about 3 a.m. Saturday. In addition to the camera gear later dropped into the hole, rescuers could lower food and water, if the miners are found alive.

"I am very hopeful -- I'm just tired," Murray said at an early morning briefing when asked about the men's chances. "We have every reason to hope" the six miners are alive.

The first drilling project, a 2 1/2-inch hole through which a two-way microphone was dropped, was completed early Friday morning. No communication with the miners resulted.

Rescuers -- partially relying on oxygen readings that ranged from survivable to insufficient to sustain life -- speculated that smaller drill may have struck an adjacent, abandoned area of the mine rather than the exact spot where the miners are believed to be.

Meantime, rescue teams advancing through the rubble-filled tunnels encountered a buried piece of mining equipment that was probably being used Monday by some of the trapped miners.

The rescue teams found an unoccupied cable sled, which is used to assist the continuous mining machine that cuts coal, about 650 feet into the 2,400-foot tunnel that leads to the area where the missing miners were working, Murray said.

"I thought it was a pickup at first," Murray said. "It was not damaged at all, just buried."

He said crews were advancing through caved-in coal and rock piled about 6 feet deep in the 8-foot-high tunnel. He described the materials as loose.

Crews on Saturday also were pumping oxygen through the 2 1/2-inch hole that was bored into the mine workings Friday -- still hoping it may sustain the six, if they still live.

"I'm not going to leave this mountain until they're out," Murray said.