Drilling under way for fourth hole to reach Utah miners

HUNTINGTON — Rescuers are drilling a fourth hole in an attempt to learn where six miners are trapped inside the Crandall Canyon Mine.

The latest video images from inside the cavern revealed no new signs of the miners. A camera sent down into an 8 5/8-inch hole that punched through the mountain Wednesday showed rushing water, wire mesh and an empty cavity.

"There's some cables, some power cables that were in the hole," mine owner Bob Murray told reporters today as he showed a clip of the latest video. "There's been no roof fall. There's been no outburst of the ribs."

There is also about 16 percent oxygen inside that part of the mine, officials said. It is enough to sustain life.

Rescuers downplayed today five minutes of "noise" detected when a drill punched a third hole through the mountain into the cavern. Yet they conceded that it was significant enough that they moved the location of the fourth hole to the area where the noise originated.

A pair of geophones, placed on the mountain to detect vibrations, picked up five minutes' worth after rescuers began trying to signal the trapped miners. They registered as graphs.

"We saw spikes about every second and a half that lasts for about five or six minutes," said assistant U.S. Labor Secretary Richard Stickler.

Authorities cautioned that noise could have been anything.

"Those sounds could have been anything from water, to somebody walking on the surface, to an animal, to thunder," Murray said today.

Today marks the 11th day that Kerry Allred, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Don Erickson, Manuel Sanchez and Brandon Phillips have been trapped underground. The miners were eight hours into a 12-hour shift Aug. 6 when part of the mine collapsed, trapping them nearly 1,900 feet underground.

Setbacks

Underground efforts have been stymied by seismic activity inside the Crandall Canyon Mine. Again today, a pressure-changing "bump" blew coal onto a continuous mining machine.

"The mountain is still alive, and the mountain is not allowing us to advance as rapidly as we would like to," Murray said today.

So far, rescuers have advanced about 826 feet underground, with about 1,200 feet to go.

Rescuers have had a frustrating series of setbacks in in trying to contact the six trapped miners.