Search is over: 'Eagle we mourn for those we lost'

HUNTINGTON — The search for six miners trapped inside a collapsed part of the Crandall Canyon Mine is over.

Federal authorities suspended the rescue effort indefinitely, leaving the miners' families devastated. There is no word of when — or even if — there will be any later effort to recover the bodies of Don Erickson, Kerry Allred, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips, Luis Hernandez and Manuel Sanchez.

"I think our trapped miners are going to be in there a long time," Colin King, a lawyer hired by the miners' families, said Friday. "I think this means that MSHA (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) has concluded the miners are dead."

Hopes of finding any signs of life faded when workers dropped a robot with a camera attached down one of the seven boreholes on Friday. All they found was debris, mud and water. It was the same outcome that they found Thursday, when they drilled the seventh hole 1,865 feet through a mountain into rubble.

The families are all, understandably, heartbroken.

"Now is not a good time," said a woman who answered the telephone at Don Erickson's home in Helper.

The Payan and Hernandez families seemed particularly hurt by the news that their loved ones may remain entombed in the Crandall Canyon Mine, said family friend Sonny Olsen.

"It has some deeper spiritual meaning," he told the Deseret Morning News. "It's more of a deeper spiritual loss for them to be left in the mountain."

Out of options

As they have done for the past 26 days, the families gathered on the outskirts of Huntington at the Desert Edge Christian Chapel for a briefing with MSHA officials.

"We basically told the families that at this point and time we've run out of options," said Rich Kulczewski, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor.

Each of the seven holes drilled through the mountain into areas the miners could conceivable have gone revealed no sign of the miners. Conditions inside the mine continue to deteriorate with the addition of more mud, water and debris. The robot used in Friday's final attempt down a borehole is now stuck behind a rock, and its operators hope to recover the device today.

Some families wanted rescue efforts to continue. As for drilling an eighth hole, Kulczewski said: "We just don't know where else we could put a hole to get any other information."

King said the families will follow any plans for a recovery "very carefully."

No one from Murray Energy Corp. — the company that owns the mine — was at the meeting, Olsen said. Calls to Murray Energy officials for comment late Friday were not returned.