Mine boss defends search for US miners

A coal mine owner in Utah today said he is hurt by critics who say he ran an unsafe mine and was not doing enough to find six missing miners trapped deep underground.

He also said he emotionally “came apart” after a second cave-in killed three rescuers.

“I didn’t desert anybody,” Bob Murray told The Associated Press in the middle-of-the-night phone call. “I’ve been living on this mountain every day, living in a little trailer.”

He said the fifth narrow hole being drilled in the side of the mountain to try to locate the miners had broken through.

Searchers planned to bang on a drill bit and wait for a response, take air readings, and lower a microphone and camera. Officials said they expect the results to be the same as from the four previous tries: no signs of life.

If searchers fail to find any sign of life, the rescue effort might be called off.

If that happens, the miners’ family members, who have clung to the hope that the men would be found alive, will finally start “to grieve and to heal,” said Sonny Olsen, an attorney acting as spokesman for the families.

Murray, 67, did not comment on the possibility.

During the early phone call, he had described the scene of the second collapse inside the mine that killed the three rescue workers and injured six others last Thursday and how it affected him.

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.

Murray, who has been a target of families’ anger over the suspended search for the missing miners, said he later dropped out of a debriefing with federal officials and began wandering around the mine yard in the moonlight, reliving the collapse. He said he broke down.

“I came apart,” he said. “I was under a doctor’s care for a couple days.”

Murray spoke bitterly of the United Mine Workers of America, which has called his company callous for planning to resume mining at other parts of the 5,000-acre Crandall Canyon.

“They’re twisting it all around to discredit me and my company,” he said during the 12-minute phone call.

He said he might resume mining in other parts of the mine, but not in the area where the miners are trapped.

“Had I known that this evil mountain, this alive mountain, would do what it did, I would never have sent the miners in here,” he said. “I’ll never go near that mountain again. It’s alive and it’s evil.”

After the first collapse on August 6, Murray became the public face of the rescue effort, saying repeatedly that the men could have survived and he would bring them home, alive or dead. But he retreated from that view after the deaths of the rescue workers.

He re-emerged Monday to announce that the trapped miners would likely remain entombed in the Crandall Canyon mine.

With the trapped miners all but left for dead 1,500 feet deep inside the crumbling mountain, critics are saying the mine was a disaster waiting to happen and pointing fingers at Murray Energy Corp and the federal government as the agents of the tragedy.

Families and friends vented their frustration at the mine’s owner and questioned whether it was too dangerous to be working there.

At a funeral yesterday for one of the rescue workers who died, a friend of one of the trapped miners confronted Murray and accused him of skimping on the rescue efforts. He then handed Murray a dollar note.

“This is just to help you out so you don’t kill him,” the man said.

Murray’s head snapped back as if slapped. When the man wouldn’t take back the bill, Murray threw the money on the ground. “I’ll tell you what, son, you need to find out about the Lord,” Murray said.

Miners’ advocates accuse the Mine Safety and Health Administration of being too accommodating to the industry at the expense of safety. They also say MSHA was too quick to approve the mining plan at Crandall Canyon despite concerns that it was too dangerous for mining to continue when Murray bought it a year ago.

In question is the decision to allow Crandall Canyon’s operators to mine between two sections that had already been excavated using a mining technique known as “retreat mining” that causes the roof to collapse.

Experts think any investigation will focus on why MSHA agreed to that plan.

In addition to the questions about structure, experts say that the operators and MSHA should have been aware that deep mines such as Crandall Canyon are prone to “bumps” – an unpredictable and dangerous phenomenon that happens when settling layers of earth bear down on the walls of a coal mine. The force can cause pillars to fail, turning chunks of coal into deadly missiles.

The August 6 cave-in that trapped the men is believed to have been caused by a mountain bump.

Since then, there have been several other bumps, including one last week that killed the rescue workers, injured six others and led MSHA to call off efforts to dig underground to the six trapped miners.

The United Mine Workers yesterday called for an independent investigation into the mine, the collapse and the rescue efforts. Gov Jon Huntsman wants MSHA to immediately inspect two Murray Energy mines in neighbouring Carbon County.