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CNN Live Today

Look at What It May be Like to be Trapped in Mine

Aired July 30, 2002 - 11:35   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: Only one of the nine miners pulling from that flooded mine shaft is still in the hospital this morning after being trapped for more than 77 hours. The state of Pennsylvania has formed a special commission to take a look at how the accident happened in the first place. The miners were relying on faulty maps that show the flooded, abandoned mine next to them, the maps showed it was hundreds of yards away, but it was actually right next to them.

Now it;s hard to imagine what it would be like it be trapped in a cold, dark mine or days at a time.

But our Jeff Flock is giving us an idea this morning. He is live in a coal mine in Patton, Pennsylvania.

Jeff, you never seem to amaze us.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, Leon. I don't know, I'm not going to be trapped in here, we hope, unless there a cave-in or something. But at this moment, we are doing OK.

I want to show you, you know, abandoned mines like this one, like the Saxon Mine, have a lot of water in it. Perhaps you see it down there. And go ahead and throw that in there. That's not water that's potentially drinkable, is it, Jake?

JAKE MILLER, RETIRED MINER: No. It has a lot of sulfur and impurities in it, but if I had to, I would drink it.

FLOCK: Right, if you were trapped long enough. As we said, this is an abandoned mine, but one that you bring folks down in to tour every once in a while this. And this is what coal looks like, yes?

MILLER: Yes, that's boney (ph) there. But this is coal here. And the type they loaded in this mines, the same as in the Saxon mine. This came down a conveyer, and dropped on this cart. That mine down there. They put it on the belt, and the belt took it the whole way outside.

FLOCK: Got you. If we back on up here, and again, different elevations, if we had water in this mine, we would head into this direction, this is high ground.

MILLER: Yes, because this is high. The water accumulate down where we showed you in that water hole. FLOCK: Let's hold on, and let's see if we can get our camera to look down the way this. This really roughly approximates, Leon, what it would look like for the miners -- one of your men back in there. This is about the same size, about four feet tall.

MILLER: Yes, about four feet high, and about 12, 14 feet wide. You notice that guy is 6-foot tall, and he has hunkered over pretty good to come down out of there.

FLOCK: This is basically what these guys were up against in terms of how they had to hunch over, and watch your step as you go through here. And then one more thing to show before we get away. You know, you have got a piece of equipment out there, outside, that is really approximates the kind of gear they were using as they cut through in the Saxon mine.

MILLER: Outside we have what they call Lenore's (ph) Oscillator. Now that's the same type of machine them guys were using down there at Somerset, when they got into that water.

FLOCK: What is behind us here is the old time equipment. As you, as I said, bring tours down in here. And amazingly, this stuff still works.

MILLER: Yes, this stuff hasn't run since the '60s. And we got pieces of it working. We will show you after a whole how they work and how much noise they make.

FLOCK: Very good. We well back in maybe about half hour's time. So we will stand by. Appreciate this very much.

MILLER: OK. We will report back in a about a half hour's time, and we will give you a real feel for how old time mining operated. It's a real experience to be down in here. This is one of the things we were trying to accomplish, to really get a feel for what folks are up against, and this is it. That's it.

Back to you.

HARRIS: Jeff, you know what I'm curious about, is the man you were just speaking with -- I didn't catch his name -- did you talk to him at all about whether or not he is concerned about these maps that these miners have been using for years. And obviously, there is a big problem with the accuracy of this one map. I wonder if he is afraid to go down himself because of these inaccurate maps out there.

FLOCK: You know, I will ask Jake Miller that question. We were talking earlier about these maps. You were saying, there is no way these things are accurate, because folks would sometimes take more coal than they were supposed to in these old mines, right?

MILLER: Yes, that's what happened. Now, you shine your light up there, that coal looks real nice up there. That's the end of my boundary. I'm not allowed to go no further. But nobody is here to see what I'm doing. I could take some more coal out of there, nobody will ever know what I did. FLOCK: So the boundaries of that Saxon mine may have gone well beyond what they were. And of course speculation, we don't know, but there is no way to know, because nobody one would go down to an abandoned mind.

MILLER: Yeah, it's an abandoned mine, and full of water. You can never get back in to measure to see how much coal they did take out of there. And That operator, he is long gone, retired or dead or whatever, and they can't do nothing to him any more. We have got a lot of abandoned mines like that.

FLOCK: This is the speculation, Leon, among the miners as to what that problem was.

HARRIS: Very interesting. Thank you, Jeff. Thank your buddy there as well.

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