Leaving 6 in mine is called the last option
The bodies of 12 miners have been buried in the Knox Mine in Pennsylvania for almost 50 years. Of the 78 killed in a Farmington, W.Va., mine in 1968, 19 remain entombed. After a 1976 accident that killed 26 men, the Scotia Mine in Kentucky was sealed.
Could that be the fate of six miners trapped since Aug. 6 in the Crandall Canyon Mine, after three people died last week trying to save them?
That question has been on people's minds here, but those familiar with mining said that the colleagues of the missing men will do everything in their power to get them out, however long it takes.
"It's a brotherhood. If they were in there, they would want somebody to come back and recover them," said Bob Ferriter, a former MSHA engineer who teaches safety at the Colorado School of Mines. Leaving the six men in the coal mine "would be the last option," he said.
Underground rescue efforts were suspended indefinitely after Thursday's fatal mine collapse, and officials were taking a close look at whether they could resume in a mountain that appears to be slowly crumbling.
The cave-in at 6:39 p.m. was believed to be caused by a "mountain bump," shifting layers of earth. The force from the bump registered a magnitude 1.6 at the University of Utah seismograph stations in Salt Lake City.
"These events seem to be related to ongoing settling of the rock mass following the main event," university spokesman Lee Siegel said. "I don't think I'm going too far to say that this mountain is collapsing in slow motion."
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman ordered flags lowered to half staff. "We went from a tragedy to a catastrophe," he said.
Huntsman continued to call the effort a rescue operation, but he said the digging would not resume until workers' safety could be guaranteed.
"Let us ensure that we have no more injuries. We have suffered enough as a state," he said.
Mark Thompson, 52, a miner for 27 years, said the urge to keep digging will remain strong.
"I'm sure there would be a point, but who's going to make that call?" he said of stopping an underground search. "If they need help, they need help. Would you leave one of your co-workers?"
Huntington Mayor Hilary Gordon, whose son-in-law is a miner, said she wouldn't know when to scratch a rescue.
"I thank God I don't have to make that call. As a miner's wife, I would want to keep going," she said. "But if I was the wife of a rescue worker, I would say that's really dangerous."
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