Utah Mine Cave-In Kills 3 Rescue Workers, Injures 6

Utah Mine Cave-In Kills 3 Rescue Workers, Injures 6 (Update1)

By Brian Lysaght
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Heavy machinery used in the mine rescue

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Three rescue workers were killed and six others injured when a tunnel collapsed as they tried to reach miners trapped since Aug. 6 in a coal mine in central Utah.

The casualties occurred late yesterday, said Tammy Kikuchi, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Natural Resources, in an interview with KUTV, a local CBS television affiliate.

The rescuers were digging to find six miners trapped 1,500 feet (450 meters) below ground at Murray Energy Corp.'s Crandall Canyon mine near Huntington. The rescuers died in a collapse caused by a mountain bump, or a shift in pressure that shoots rock from the walls with great force, the Associated Press reported. A similar event trapped the six miners, AP said.

``This is going to be investigated thoroughly,'' Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. said in an interview with Cable News Network. ``I don't want to jump to any conclusions.''

It isn't known whether the six trapped miners are alive. Rescue teams had drilled a series of holes and were using cameras and audio equipment to look for survivors. The search was suspended after yesterday's collapse.

Sixty-five people were underground yesterday as part of the rescue effort, the Department of Labor said in a statement on its Web site. The search had been suspended temporarily on Aug. 15 because of seismic activity, the department said.

Forty-seven people died in coal-mining accidents in the U.S. last year, compared with 22 the year before, according to the Web site of the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration. Yesterday's deaths bring the total so far this year to 20.