HUNTINGTON — Findings from what may be the final effort to reach six trapped miners likely won't be announced until Wednesday morning, a federal mine official said.
Work is continuing today on a fifth borehole being drilled into an area of the Crandall Canyon Mine where the six men may have retreated after a 3.9-magnitude seismic event Aug. 6 collapsed the west-central section of the mine.
Mine officials said the hole is expected to punch through around 5 a.m. Wednesday. Rescue crews then will lower audio and visual equipment into the mine and attempt to make contact with the miners for several hours.
Federal mine officials and representatives from Murray Energy Corp., which owns the mine, first will meet with families of the trapped miners before briefing the media on the rescue operations. That press conference "isn't anticipated" until Wednesday, said federal Mine Safety and Health Administration spokesman Dirk Fillpot.
Four previous drilling operations have shown no signs of trapped miners Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez.
Mining experts brought in Sunday by MSHA concluded Monday that the mine is too unstable to continue any underground rescue efforts. Miners had been trying to clear debris from the collapsed mine to reach the trapped men until Thursday evening, when three men — local coal miners Dale Black, 49, and Brandon Kimber, 29, and mine safety inspector Gary Jensen, 53 — were killed and six others injured in another seismic event.
MSHA has not completely ruled out the underground rescue resuming, saying only the operations have been "suspended indefinitely."
Family members have requested that a hole be drilled large enough to send a rescue capsule down into the mine to retrieve the trapped miners — dead or alive.
MSHA boss Richard Stickler said a rescue capsule only will be utilized if rescue crews are able to locate the miners through the fifth borehole and at least one of them is still alive.
"We believe the significant risk is unacceptable to send miners underground 1,500, 1,600 feet for the purpose of exploration," Stickler said Monday.
Mine officials said they will review data from the fifth borehole before deciding whether to drill a sixth hole.
Readings from the four previous drilling efforts showed low levels of oxygen that would not be able to sustain human life. The second and third bore holes are now being used to pump oxygen into the mine.
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