6th hole in mine will be the last

HUNTINGTON — The hole being drilled today through more than 1,700 feet of mountain will be the final attempt to reach six miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine.

"This is the last hole," mine owner Bob Murray said Wednesday night. "If we don't find anybody alive in that hole, there is nowhere else that anyone ... would know where to drill anymore holes to try to find these trapped miners."

The drill is expected to break through Saturday, and it may bring a heartbreaking and frustrating halt to the frantic search for trapped miners Don Erickson, Kerry Allred, Luis Hernandez, Brandon Phillips, Carlos Payan and Manuel Sanchez. The men may be entombed inside a mountain.

Rescue efforts trudge along "until we're assured there's no life, and we can't get the folks," said Jack Kuzar, a regional director for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

A fifth hole that punched through 1,586 feet of mountain Wednesday went only 6 inches into the cavern before hitting a coal bed.

"It was within 6 inches of the roof. There was no one going to get in that area," Kuzar said Wednesday.

Air samples were being taken and a camera was low-

ered Wednesday night in an attempt to glean information about the miners' fate.

Four previous drilling operations have shown no sign of the miners, who have been trapped since a 3.9 magnitude seismic event collapsed the section of the mine where they were working Aug. 6. In addition, air samples taken from the drilled holes have shown that oxygen levels in those areas of the mine are insufficient to sustain human life.

Families react

After meeting with mine officials and federal authorities, the families of the six trapped miners left disappointed. Family spokesman, Price attorney Sonny Olsen, said the families contacted Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s office, asking him to pressure Murray to revive recovery efforts.

"They're hoping that Mr. Murray will retract his statement that he won't retrieve them if they did, in fact, perish, that they'll find some way and utilize some method, regardless if it takes three months for seismic activity to stop," Olsen said. "They want some method to go down and get their family members."