3rd bore hole being drilled

HUNTINGTON CANYON — Drilling crews hope to finish a third bore hole into the Crandall Canyon Mine late tonight.

If there is no sign of the six miners missing for 10 days, preparations are already under way to drill a fourth hole. After that, mine owner Bob Murray concedes options are limited.

Each hole is drilled based on the first, second and third probabilities of where the miners would have likely run to either escape or seek shelter once the walls started crumbling. But if a fourth hole is completed and doesn't yield an indication of life, there might not be a fifth hole.

"At that point we're running out of possibilities," Murray said.

Drilling is trial and error. "You drill a hole where you think the men are," the president of Murray Energy said. "Now we're drilling where we think the miners may have gone next."

The efforts to locate Kerry Allred, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Don Erickson, Manuel Sanchez and Brandon Phillips have been marked by extreme frustration.

Rescuers probe the earth not knowing exactly where the miners might have gone if they survived the initial shaking underground. "They may have gone into this area and barricaded themselves to have good air to support life," Murray said. If not, he surmised they could have gone into space the fourth hole would penetrate.

Murray appeared upbeat as he shared some good news Tuesday evening while making an unscheduled appearance at the base command post.

"This is the best day we've had so far, and the day's just half over," he told a small group of reporters about 6 p.m.

The third bore hole being drilled was more than 800 feet deep by Tuesday evening, Murray said. Rescue crews anticipate having to drill down to 1,415 feet.

Meantime, 134 miners working four shifts 24 hours a day continue to furiously dig their way through the mine. The underground effort has been painstakingly slow due to instability of the earth.

The main horizontal tunnel being dug to reach the miners was an estimated 750 feet by late Tuesday afternoon. Rescuers estimate they have another 1,150 feet to go.

Just two days after Murray said the group was experiencing some of the toughest drilling conditions he had seen in his 50 years of mining, he was more positive Tuesday.

"It is progressing more rapidly," he said of the drilling. "We're going twice as fast as we were."