KEY POINTS:
UTAH - Rescuers searching for trapped coal miners plan to bore a third hole into a collapsed Utah mine after another attempt to locate them with a camera failed, a city official said.
Families of the six miners were shown dark, unrevealing images on Sunday morning from a camera lowered a second time into the mine, Huntington City Councilwoman Julie Jones told Reuters.
"You couldn't see much. Water was trickling in there. It was dark," she said. "They couldn't see any bodies."
There has been no sign of the miners nearly a week after the Utah mine shaft they were working in collapsed.
The first two holes drilled into the mine have failed to produce any signs of life, although the second area penetrated had "survivable space", officials said on Saturday after viewing images from the camera.
Jones said rescue teams plan to drill the third hole in an area where miners may have barricaded themselves.
"They are still thinking the miners retreated," she said, referring to rescuers.
Then she added: "I was with the (miners') families today. They have as much hope today as they did have."
CNN quoted her as saying the third hole would have a nearly 23cm diameter, which is big enough for an exploratory camera, food and water to pass into the cavern.
Water pouring through one of the holes had foiled an initial attempt to use a camera to examine the space about 550m below the surface. Rescuers then inserted a lining in the hole to protect the camera, and it produced the disappointing images that Jones described.
The miners have not been heard from since Monday, when part of the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, collapsed.
The reinserted camera had been expected to be able to scan 30m in each direction and provide details of the conditions underground.
After breaking through the mine ceiling early Saturday morning, rescuers banged on the metal drill to draw the attention of any survivors, shutting down all the equipment and lights on the surface to listen for sounds from below. But their signals were met by silence.
A first 6cm drill pierced into another area of the mine late on Thursday. There was no sign of life when a two-way microphone was lowered into the mine, and tests in that hole showed oxygen levels in the chamber were too low to sustain life.
- REUTERS
