Tremors destroy US mine rescue efforts
Seismic activity has “totally shut down” efforts to reach six Utah miners trapped below ground, wiping out a day’s rescue effort, a mine executive said today.
“We are back to square one underground,” said Robert Murray, chairman of Murray Energy, owner of the Crandall Canyon mine in Huntingdon.
“We should know within 48 to 72 hours the status of those trapped miners.”
Rescue crews are drilling two holes into the mountain in an effort to communicate with the miners – provided they are still alive.
Meanwhile, unstable conditions below ground have thwarted rescuers’ efforts to break through to the miners, who have been trapped 1,500ft below the surface for nearly two days.
The seismic activity and other factors “have totally shut down our rescue efforts underground”, Murray said.
“There is absolutely no way that through our underground rescue effort we can reach the vicinity of the trapped miners for at least one week.”
Murray has insisted the cave-in was caused by an earthquake. But US government seismologists have said the pattern of ground-shaking picked up by their instruments around the time of the accident on Monday appeared to have been caused not by an earthquake, but by the cave-in itself.
Murray also lashed out at the media for suggesting his men were conducting “retreat mining”, a dangerous method in which miners pull down the last standing pillars of coal and let the roof fall in.
“This was caused by an earthquake, not something that Murray Energy ... did or our employees did or our management did,” he said, his voice often rising in anger.
“It was a natural disaster. An earthquake. And I’m going to prove it to you.”
