Posted on 08/12/2007 2:59:01 PM PDT by Westlander
Rescuers trying to find six miners missing a week in a devastated coal mine failed to see any sign of them through a video camera lowered through a drill hole and will drill yet another hole in an attempt to locate the men, a federal official said Sunday.
Poor lighting allowed the camera to only see about 15 feet into a void at the bottom of the drill hole, far less than the 100 feet it's capable of seeing, said Richard Stickler, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc4.com ...
I wondering why they weren’t drilling more than one hole at a time? Why wait until now to drill into the place the miners were trained to go?
Prayers for those poor bastards indeed...
The vibration from drilling more than one hole at a time could cause a collapse.
Heck, one drill can cause a collapse, but there’s no real choice there.
If they weren’t drilling where the miners were trained to go, where were they drilling?!
Did they think they knew where they were - someplace OTHER than where the miners were trained to go?!
This is just such a sad sad situation. I feel so sorry for their families. I still pray they find them, but it looks dire.
susie
That makes sense. Thanks.
I feel so bad for those guys and their families. Don’t know how anyone can do a job like that.
From the article:
“Bob Murray, head of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the mine, said the new drilling location will send the drill into an area that the miners would have gone if air in their original location was bad.”
So, they tried the MOST LIKELY PLACE FIRST, and now they’re on the NEXT MOST LIKELY PLACE.
Makes sense to me.
What difference does it make if its one drill or three drills that cause a collapse.
My prayers for them and their families.
Yeah - me too. I thought I heard something different on one of the “middle of the night” news shows.... thanks
One drill has a chance of causing a collapse, but the chance is worth taking.
Two or three drills all going at the same time would be an unacceptable risk. This has happened before, and when they tried to drill too many holes at the same time the mountain collapsed. That tends to be rather final.
Thank you.
There were drilling both of these holes simultaneously. The second hole is much larger than the first, and drilled slower.
Poor Alecia.....what an ignorant presstitute. Circular holes have a measurable diameter....not width
A failed English major, with no math at all, she misinforms the masses.
Ever been around a drill rig? Ever see how much additional infrastructure stuff is pulled up around drill rigs when they’re drilling a deep hole?
Once you have, you’d know why they’re punching one hole at a time. There’s only so many locations on top of the “likely spots” where the miners would be, and you can probably fit only one drilling operation on that patch of ground.
I’ve paid for 16” diameter irrigation wells as well as 8” domestic wells to be drilled, hung around and helped the drillers the whole way down and out. From my experience, I can tell you that they’re drilling mighty darn fast with that small-bore rig. Shockingly fast, actually.
For a long time I had a concrete cutting company. We could drill up to 48”, even 60” diamater holes. I expect the mountain drilling is different because of the uneven mountain v. a smooth concrete structure and deeper depths needed for the mountain. We didn’t have vibration as a huge factor in what we did. In fact, the low vibration, compared to other ways of getting rid of concrete, was one of our selling points.
I know how tricky it can be to hit your target on such a deep hole. When you add in the life and death factor - it’s got to be horrible.
explain this—
the camera was only able to see about 15 ft due to poor lighting conditions
I would expect it to be a little dark hundreds of feet underground after a mine collapse. Was this a surprise? Why was a light not the first thing after the bit down this hole?
The directional drilling techniques used to try to save these miners was developed and perfected in the petroleum industry for drilling oil and gas wells. You would be suprised what targets they can hit.
By the way, the libs would probably have a ‘cat’ if they knew who the name of the directional drilling company up on that mountain in Utah. Better known in the ‘awl bidness’ as Big Red, yep good ole Haliburton.
Haliburton huh. Well, when you need the best ...you get the best. That’s a tough business. I wish them luck.
I imagine this: “poor lighting conditions” is a euphemism for “tons of coal dust in the air.”
If it is the case that there is a significant amount of coal dust suspended in the air, then almost no light that could be dropped down that hole (without igniting the coal dust) is going to get much visibility.
My shoot-from-the-hip engineering mind says “drop an IR camera down there” and then you’d be able to see body heat through coal dust.
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