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CNN Live Today

Mine Rescue Stalled

Aired July 26, 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Up first on CNN, a race against the time, the limits of time, machinery and hope as well.

Rescue crews in Somerset, Pennsylvania, have been forced to suspend their rescue attempt of nine miners trapped in a flooded mine shaft. The large drill that they were using to reach the miners has broken, and precious hours have been slipping away.

For the latest on the crisis, we'll go to our Brian Palmer, who is on the scene.

Brian -- hello.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn. I actually lost my audio, but I'm just going to assume that you can hear me.

The latest word that we had is that the rescue operation has been suspended for about seven to eight hours -- actually not suspended, but stalled, because of a broken drill bit. They are frantically trying to get that drill bit out of the hole. It's stuck at about 100 feet, which means they are less than halfway to that pocket where the miners -- where they believe the miners are.

We got a briefing a few hours ago from the governor of Pennsylvania, Mark Schweiker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MARK SCHWEIKER, PENNSYLVANIA: I assure you, we're doing everything that's humanly and intellectually possible and mechanically-so to get down there and retrieve the head, the drill bit that's going to be so important as we create that 30-inch rescue shaft and bring up nine of our guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PALMER: Now, the governor also told us that they are going to be trying to dig a second shaft in order to -- a second rescue shaft, but this shaft could take several hours. They gave us no real hard estimated time of completion on that, but that would be a backup shaft to this first one.

The governor also spoke about the condition of the families. They are sort of being hosted at the Sipesville Volunteer Fire Department, and they are just going to keep us updated on this situation.

We are expecting a 12:00 briefing from the Department of Environmental Protection, and we should learn some more by then -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Brian, it was disheartening to listen to the governor's news conference earlier this morning, and we will be running a little bit more of that -- OK, well, actually Brian cannot hear me, so we will let Brian go and check back with him.

I do want you to know that we will be running more of the governor's news conference. He did have more information on what is happening.

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