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Originally published August 17, 2007
HUNTINGTON - The outburst came without warning.
And in crushing to death three would-be rescuers Thursday evening, the violent explosion of coal from a tunnel wall in the Crandall Canyon mine put a temporary - perhaps even permanent - end to underground efforts to reach six other coal miners trapped since Aug. 6 by a much more catastrophic meltdown of the aged mine.
The victims were identified Friday as Brandon Kimber of Price, Dale R. Black of Huntington and Gary Jensen of Redmond, a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspector in the agency's Price office. Five other miners and a second MSHA inspector were injured.
Future rescue efforts depend on multiple factors. Primary is the findings of a borehole expected Saturday to pierce a "bleeder" tunnel deep in the mine where rescue organizers theorize the missing men may have barricaded themselves.
If a camera or microphone lowered through the borehole detects life there, organizers will use that shaft to deliver food, water and oxygen to the six - Don Erickson, Manuel Sanchez, Kerry Allred, Luis Alonso Hernandez, Brandon Phillips and Juan Carlos Payan.
Those supplies could keep the trapped miners going for as long as it takes rescuers to reach them. That could be a long time following Thursday's devastating outburst in the fresh-air tunnel, the main avenue to the mine's back end.
MSHA director Richard Stickler said Friday the underground advance through that tunnel toward the trapped miners was suspended after a magnitude 1.6 "bump" suddenly propelled tons of coal with explosive force into the void.
The outburst blasted a crew that had just extended the reclaimed portion of the tunnel up to Crosscut 127, about 840 feet from where the work started 10 days earlier, but still 1,600 feet shy of the area where the missing miners were working when the walls collapsed.
Pressure from the weight of nearly 2,000 feet of mountain overhead caused the walls to burst out with such force that it completely destroyed an extra-strong system of wall and roof supports installed by rescuers.
"We put in the maximum protection we could and it wasn't enough," said Kevin Stricklin, head of MSHA's coal program. "That's the reason we suspended the underground operation. We're not sure where to go."
MSHA and Murray Energy Corp., the mine's co-owner/operator, now are turning to ground-control experts from around the country, looking for new ideas about how to stabilize the precarious underground environment long enough to get the trapped miners out - if any survived the severe concussion of the Aug. 6 collapse.
"There was a consensus that the plan we had developed and implemented provided the maximum safety for the workers that we knew to be available," added MSHA boss Stickler. "Obviously, it was not adequate.
" . . . We have to ask ourselves if there is any possible way we can continue this underground operation and provide safety for the rescue workers. At this point, we don't have an answer to that question," he said. "And that answer will guide future decisions of if - and when - we would resume any type of effort to reach these trapped miners underground."
The nine rescuers had cut their way up Thursday evening up to Crosscut 127. They had installed the interlinked wall support system on the right side and were preparing to do the same on the left side when the right wall exploded, hurling coal, steel props and cables and chain link fencing across the tunnel.
"It cleared everything in its path. The personnel there were thrown up against the left [wall]," said Stricklin.
Other rescuers frantically started digging them out of the rubble with their bare hands, in some cases pulling off five feet of coal, he said. As soon as their bodies were freed, they were laid into the beds of pickups and driven out of the mine.
Stricklin said it took an hour after the 6:35 p.m. blast to get all of the victims and rescuers out of the mine. One man was dead at the scene, two others succumbed later. Three remained hospitalized late Friday.
"Those that were injured in last night's event are heroes," Murray Energy Corp. vice president Rob Moore said Friday. "They made the ultimate sacrifice in their efforts to reach these trapped miners, people they know, people they loved."
Moore said company owner Robert Murray rushed into the mine after the accident. Although the flamboyant owner has addressed the missing miners' families and media multiple times daily since the disaster began, he was absent Friday. UtahAmerica Energy, a co-owner of the mine, said in a news release that his duties would be taken over by three individuals who would handle all media contacts.
"He wanted to be here and I'm certain you understand why he couldn't be," said Moore, without elaboration.
Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. visited with the families and rescue organizers Friday, ordering that flags statewide be lowered to half staff.
"This [rescue] is in the hands of the experts and the professionals, and I understand they are tasked with this kind of responsibility," said Huntsman, who earlier called for an end to the underground search until rescuer safety is guaranteed. "Let us ensure that we have no more injuries. We have suffered enough as a state."
Sen. Orrin Hatch also toured the stricken area, expressing his support for residents, the company and MSHA. "We still have to keep moving ahead," he said of the rescue effort. "I'm a great believer in miracles."
Good engineering, planning and patience may be the best recipe for future underground advances, said Robert Ferriter, director of the Colorado School of Mines' mine safety and health program.
"It's too dangerous right now," he said. "Mother Nature is trying to get back to a state of equilibrium because you've gone in there and ripped out part of the support system."
How long that will take is anybody's best guess, Ferriter added.
If today's borehole finds life underground but ground-control experts cannot devise a system better than what MSHA and Murray Energy had come up with - MSHA's Stricklin said "we think that's going to be hard to do" - one of the few remaining options is to bore a 30-inch diameter hole from the surface down into the mine.
Organizers then could lower a capsule to the trapped miners, who would be raised to the surface one at a time. That method was used to remove nine miners from Pennsylvania's flooded Quecreek Mine in 2002.
But the miners there were only about 300 feet below the surface, not 1,800 like here, and the drill pad in Pennsylvania was on a flat dairy farm off alongside a highway, not on the top of a steep-sloped Utah mountain.
Stickler earlier said it would take almost three weeks alone to set up the drill rig and a couple of weeks to bore the sizable hole.
Given the circumstances, however, "we've talked to Mr. Murray and the company that they need to get moving in this direction," added Stricklin, noting there is a capsule reasonably close to the mine. "That's been on the table since we arrived."
Tribune reporters Robert Gehrke, Patty Henetz and Kristen Moulton contributed to this report.