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HUNTINGTON - Another setback and still no signs of life deep underground on Sunday prompted rescue officials to pursue a new approach in finding six coal miners trapped for almost a week in the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine.
Daylong preparations were made to drill a third borehole into the mine. This 8 -inch hole is expected to enter a section deeper in the mine than where the miners were working last Monday when a massive cave-in occurred.
Rescue organizers now are targeting "bleeder" tunnels - so named because their primary purpose is to provide an avenue for potentially explosive gases to bleed away from active mining faces - figuring the miners might have retreated there if they found their direct routes out of the mine blocked by fallen coal and rock.
And those routes are blocked. Cave-ins have filled three-quarters to all of the primary and secondary escape tunnels from the section where the trapped miners - Brandon Phillips, Manuel Sanchez, Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Juan Carlos Payan and Jose Luis Hernandez - were working when the collapse occurred in the early hours of Aug. 6.
In the past week, mine-rescue teams trying to plow their way back through that rubble have progressed just 580 feet in the main, 2,400-foot-long tunnel. Their advance was suspended temporarily early Sunday, when they were forced to withdraw from the mine after two significant "bounces" threatened to hurl more rock into the tunnel.
But roof and wall support structures installed by the teams held fast and none of the rescuers was injured, said federal Mine Safety and Health Administration boss Richard Stickler.
"We will continue doing everything we can to accelerate that rate of advance," he pledged. But Stickler also noted "we're in the most difficult ground conditions since we started."
Added Rob Morris, vice president of the mine's owner/operator, UtahAmerican Energy Inc.: "We're dealing with conditions that those who have been in the area for 30 years have not encountered previously. . . . Each day, each minute, we're learning more and are better prepared for the conditions we're dealing with."
The decision to drill a third borehole came after a camera lowered Sunday morning through a second borehole, much closer to the area where the miners were working, revealed no signs of life.
Stickler said the cylindrical camera showed a miner's bag, a chain and other equipment typically found in a mine. "But we did not see any sign at all of any of the miners," he said.
Limited light, however, prevented the camera from capturing images more than 15 feet away. The camera was paired with better lighting, but still only saw about 15 feet when it was lowered into the mine overnight, said Al Davis, who oversees Western operations for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. The images that came back included a distorted conveyor belt and an intact roof.
The second time the camera was lowered into the tunnel it confirmed the initial probe's finding that collapses in that area were only about 2 feet deep. That provides hope that the rescuers' advance through the caved-in tunnel will get easier the farther forward they move.
Stickler said the company has brought in hydraulic pumps to install roof controls more efficiently, allowing other equipment to remove tons of rubble more quickly.
But he also said rescue organizers are concerned the initial collapse of the mine's walls may have allowed oxygen-deficient air from old sections to infiltrate into the area where the missing miners were working.
That might account for air readings from the first borehole that showed oxygen concentrations so low they would not support life for long, Stickler said. It also would mean that rescue teams would have to be even more careful as they moved deeper into the mine since they would be running the risk of encountering potentially deadly air.
"We're setting up to do a test using tracer gas . . . At this point, it's only our best guess of the conditions we have," Stickler said. "The better we understand just what's going on from a ventilation standpoint, [it] will help us plan."
Moore said drilling of the third borehole is expected to begin in the pre-dawn hours today. Projected to be 1,414 feet long, this borehole will be 450 feet shorter than the second borehole, which took three days to reach its target.
When done, officials once again will lower the camera into the mine, hoping to find that the missing miners have barricaded themselves behind ventilation curtains that would protect them from the working section's oxygen-deficient atmosphere.
Stickler said he knows of cases in which miners have lived for as long as 11 days in treacherous conditions underground, stimulating the effort to reach the missing six.
"It would be a terrible mistake to ever give up hope until you know for sure," he said.
Added mine co-owner Bob Murray: "We are proceeding as if the men are alive and will continue to do that until we have absolute proof about their condition . . . It's very possible they are still alive."