Utah mine boss defends search for miners
"I didn't desert anybody," 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."
Murray, 67, described the scene of the second collapse that killed the three rescue workers and injured six others last Thursday.
He said he rushed into the mine in his street clothes and began digging out the men, buried under 5 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 5,000-acre Crandall Canyon.
After the first collapse on Aug. 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.
A narrow hole drilled in the side of the mountain broke through Wednesday morning, Murray said during a mid-morning interview near the mine. The hole holds perhaps the last, best chance of locating the men, but there was no immediate word on progress in those detection efforts. If, as expected, searchers fail to find any sign of life, the rescue effort might be called off.
Murray did not comment on that possibility.
If so, the miners' family members, who have clung to the hope the men might be found alive, will finally start "to grieve and to heal," said Sonny J. Olsen, an attorney acting as spokesman for the families.
"I've witnessed these families and they're strong people," he said Tuesday. "These are very hardy people, and tragedy is not new to the mining industry. These families know what can happen in these mines. I don't know that it makes it any easier."
A drill crew working on the fifth hole expected to break through early Wednesday. Searchers plan 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 the four previous tries: no signs of life.
Recent comments
Come on..."The scene of a robbery"?? What kind of a comparison...
To Doug Barber | Aug. 23, 2007 at 1:34 a.m.
Just so you know....this is how you spell CRITICIZING. (ouch-huh...
Hey a | Aug. 23, 2007 at 1:14 a.m.
Don't you live in Utah too?
Hey Wind Energy | Aug. 23, 2007 at 1:01 a.m.
