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CNN Live Today
Hope Alive for Trapped Miners
Aired July 25, 2002 - 10:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Up first this hour on CNN, a race against time and rising water. Just about an hour's drive southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, nine coal miners are trapped inside a collapsed shaft, and the water is still gushing in on top of them from an adjacent mine. Rescue crews are drilling a hole in hopes of reaching these miners, who are some 8,000 feet from the opening of the shaft. They are about 300 feet underground.
However, a glimmer of hope has emerged this morning.
CNN's Brian Palmer joins us with more on that.
Hello -- Brian.
BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.
The rescue operation continues here in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It involves hundreds of mine safety specialists, as well as local fire and rescue personnel.
We had a briefing not too long ago from state authorities, and they are telling us that there have been some encouraging signs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH SBAFFONI, DEEP MINE SAFETY: I'd say approximately about 3:00 in the morning, this morning, we were able to put that 6-inch hole through into the area, where we thought the miners would be. And when we put that hole through, we had communication with the miners that were down there. There was no indication of how many were there, but we had tapping on our drill still. So we know somebody was there, and they were alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PALMER: Now, Leon, that was the first round of tapping. A second round of tapping was heard a couple of hours later, somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning.
What had happened is the rescuers sunk or drilled a 6-inch- diameter hole in there to pump in air to give the trapped miners something to breathe, but also to displace some of the water that has flooded into the mine from an abandoned mine that, as you said, was adjacent. Now, authorities are bringing in an even bigger drill that can drill a 30-inch diameter hole. They are hoping to actually be able to put a bucket down there, and hopefully bring some people down and maybe send some -- bring some people up and send some rescuers down.
There is no word when that rig is going to get here, but they are hoping it will be here soon -- Leon.
HARRIS: Hey, Brian, are they concerned at all that if they keep drilling air holes like that one you were talking about, that they may actually collapse the one, little chamber that these miners happen to be in right now?
PALMER: OK, well, what we are told is there wasn't an actual collapse of the shaft. What happened is the miners actually broke through a wall of an abandoned mine that wasn't even listed on any charts, the last record of this mine. They believe any activity there was the 1950s.
So they broke through the wall. Water flooded through, millions and millions of gallons of water. The actual space where the miners are confined, they believe it's between about 48 to 52 inches high. So you can't even stand up there. It's a very, very tight area, Leon. And they really have no better idea of the conditions that the miners are in at this point -- Leon.
HARRIS: So they don't know for sure whether or not -- So, Brian, they don't know for sure whether or not this 48-inch-high little area you are talking about, that they happen to be crammed in right now, you don't know if there is concern that that might collapse on top of the miners then?
PALMER: There is not a lot of speculation going on, Leon.
HARRIS: OK.
PALMER: I think that it's -- they don't even know exactly where the miners are. They have a global positioning system that they have used that helped them sort of pinpoint an area where they think they are, but they have no visual identification. They are just hoping that they are judging correctly -- Leon.
HARRIS: Interesting. They're using GPS to find those guys. That's phenomenal. It's another one of these uses from that technology from the Gulf War that people never thought we'd be using it for.
Brian Palmer, thank you very much.
We also are hearing, Brian, that there is going to be a press conference scheduled around 11:00 Eastern Time -- that's about less than an hour from now -- there in Pennsylvania. And once that gets under way, we'll go back and get some more information about those miners.
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