Utah Mine Boss: Days of Searching Ahead

HUNTINGTON, Utah — Lashing out at criticism he was abandoning six trapped coal miners, the mine chief promised Wednesday to keep searching through the weekend and punch yet another hole into "this evil mountain."

Bob Murray, the face of the rescue effort since the August 6 cave-in, dropped from public view for a time after three men died trying to tunnel toward the miners, but he said he's always been focused on finding the six - dead or alive.

"I didn't desert anybody," Murray, the mine's co-owner, told The Associated Press. "I've been living on this mountain every day, living in a little trailer."

Later Wednesday, crews searching for the miners finished drilling a fifth hole into the Crandall Canyon Mine. Officials planned to bang on a drill bit and wait for a response, take air readings, and lower a microphone and camera, but said they expect the results to be the same as from the four previous tries: no sign of life.

Murray said a sixth exploratory hole would be drilled beginning Thursday if the latest attempt is unsuccessful. He said he might resume mining in other parts of the mine, but not in the area where the miners are trapped.

The collapse that trapped the miners is believed to have been caused by settling layers of earth bearing down on the walls of a coal mine, an unpredictable force known by miners as a "bump."

During his middle-of-the-night AP interview, Murray described the scene of the second collapse.

He said he rushed into the mine in his street clothes and began digging out the men, buried under five feet of coal, with his bare hands. "I never hesitated to go in there. I was the first man in and the last man out," he said.

If it was your father, son, or brother. I am sure you would want his body back.

I would not want living men, with families and dreams of their own, to risk their lives so they could bring me a body to bury. ANd if those six miners could speak to us, they would most surely not want their brother miners to risk their lives for a Hollywood ending or that greatest of all BS psychobabble notions, "closure."

It is near-impossible that the six missing miners are still alive at this point. If mechanical means can attempt to find them, those means should be used to their fullest. But it is not worth risking the living to secure the remains of the dead.

If my father, son, brother were lying under a pile of coal, of course I would want his body back so i could give him a proper burial. But not at the expense of another father, son, brother being taken from his family.

Yes, other men's lives should be put at risk to recover the six miners, no matter if they now are corpses.

Sorry, but have to call BS on that. Given a choice between bringing home my daddy's body and someone else's daddy coming home pink-cheeked and alive, I will choose the latter, a hundred times out of a hundred.

I agree that we must not break faith, and that no heroism is too great in trying to rescue the wounded. But when it comes to recovering the dead, we have to get rational. Four men have already given their lives in the effort to recover the six.

How many more would you throw in? How much does it comfort the six grieving families to know that now there are ten? Will they feel more comforted when it's twenty? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?

I can say with some confidence that most all on this site thought the movie "Saving Private Ryan" was a great story. This is the mining version of that theme - you risk your life for your brother-in-arms, no matter the odds.

Private Ryan was a living person. He was rescued and he visited Normandy with his children and grandchildren a half-century later. The Tom Hanks character urged him, "earn this." That is, do something with your life to justify the sacrifice made on your behalf.

In the last scene of the movie, Ryan is standing at the grave, in the twilight of his years, asking, "Have I?" As he's embraced by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the answer is a resounding yes. He did not flu to the moon or cure cancer. But he lived an honorable life and raised a family, any of whom might just fly to the moon or cure cancer.

"They also serve who only stand and wait" -- John Milton

"Saving Private Ryan" was a tale of heroism. If the whole mission had been to recover a corpse, it would have been a story of tragic waste. In biz-speak, I do not see the value proposition in bringing one son his father's body, which he will bury in a few days, at the expense of depriving another son of his father's living presence, which could have lasted decades.

If we abandon these miners, it only will be more proof of how cheaply we have come to value human society.

If we continue to sacrifice people to recover bodies, it will only be more proof of how much we value symbolism and ritual over life itself. Even a child will tell you that he does not want his daddy's body back if hit means another child will lose his daddy.

I hate to say it, and I don't want to discourage those folks clinging to hope, but it's overwhelmingly likely that those miners are dead. I hope they died quickly in the collapse and did not linger and suffer. If they hacve somehow remained alive, I hope and pray they will be rescued. But I am not willing to pile body upon body, grief upon grief, agony upon agony to chase that forlorn hope.

Let the dead bury the dead, and let the living live.

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