Let's focus on hope for miners, not blame

It's been nine days since the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine, trapping six Utah coal miners.

Nine days and we don't know much more than when this ordeal started.

There's no one to blame for that. Rescuers are working under very difficult conditions. Drillers are making educated guesses where to drill.

But all know that the clock is the enemy. If the miners survived the collapse, it's not known if they were in a portion of the mine that would sustain life. Was there sufficient oxygen? Are they near water? Are they injured? So many nagging questions remain.

Can you imagine what this waiting has been like for the families and friends of the miners? Or rescuers who work in the industry themselves and have a full appreciation of what nine days means to miners trapped underground only to have their efforts set back by bumps in the mine?

"I've accepted all possibilities," Cody Allred, the 32-year-old son of missing miner Kerry Allred, told Associated Press on Sunday. Meanwhile, mine officials and representatives of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration continue to treat this as a rescue mission. Until they have information otherwise, hope is important. It's all the families have at this point.

And there have been a few examples in recent years that give us reason to err on the side of hope. Remember Baby Jessica? She's all grown up and has a family of her own. Elizabeth Smart is in college, moving ahead with her life. Randal McCloy Jr. survived the Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia. He was the sole survivor among 13 miners. It's a miracle, really, that so few people were killed in the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota.

There's got to be hope. The absence of hope is despair.

I prefer to think of these men huddled together, doing their best to keep up one another's morale through prayer, song and good-natured ribbing. Perhaps they're sharing the last of their food, fantasizing about what they will eat when they are rescued. They've been trained to expect someone to come looking for them.

But the odds are stacked against such an outcome. I grew up in a mining/ranching town. My brother works in mining. It's dangerous work and even with the best training and equipment, mortal man is no match for the forces of nature and physics.

So why do they do it? They do it because in small Western towns, mining pays better than most jobs. America's unquenchable hunger for electrical power ensures that coal miners have steady work, so long as the mine produces an adequate amount of coal that can be recovered safely.