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CNN Saturday Morning News

Efforts to Rescue Trapped Coal Miners Continues

Aired July 27, 2002 - 07:04   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.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Inch by inch, minute by minute, the grim effort to reach nine trapped coal miners is continuing in Pennsylvania.

Let's go to CNN's Brian Palmer, who is standing by with the very latest. Good morning, Brian.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Catherine. I'm having some audio problems, so I won't be able to respond to your questions, but I just wanted to give you an update.

The rescue effort continues here in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The miners themselves, the nine miners, have been trapped underground for about 60 hours, going on 60 hours now.

Now, as far as the progress of the rescue effort, it's proving to be an arduous task. We got an update at about 6:00 a.m. The drilling on rescue shaft one, the first shaft to be sunk, is going very slowly. They're at about 110 feet, which means they've made very, very little progress in the past few hours.

Progress on rescue shaft two going much faster. As of 6:00, they're at 140 feet. But that still means they have about 110 feet to go.

They've been giving us predictions all along. Some of those predictions have proven to be inaccurate, but that's largely because there are too many variables to come up with really hard and fast ideas, indications of when they're going to reach the miners.

So we've been told a few hours, several hours. We're just going to wait and see what happens this morning. We're expecting a press conference in under an hour, or around an hour, with the governor of Pennsylvania, representatives from the Department of Environmental Protection, the lead agency in this rescue effort. And perhaps some other officials as well -- Catherine.

CALLAWAY: All right, thank you. A long night for you there. Brian Palmer, we'll get back with you a little bit later, get an update on the situation. Thanks, Brian.

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