Mine owner: Seal section containing miners bodies & resume mining!! [View All]

Well. That didn't take long.


HUNTINGTON - The suggestion that coal mining would resume in the Crandall Canyon mine even if efforts to rescue six trapped miners fail and their bodies are entombed forever was received with outrage in the coal community.

"To us, that would be sacred ground," Mike Dalpiaz, vice president of United Mine Workers of America District 22, in Price, said Monday. "We hope the families will stand against that and we would stand with them."

Robert Murray, chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., said enough coal remains in the mine to keep it open 2 1/2 years. He said the section containing the bodies of the miners would be sealed, but mining could continue in other parts of the mine....

Though the Crandall Canyon mine is nonunion, the International UMWA denounced the intention to resume mining. "In an industry long known for having quite a few greedy and uncaring mine operators, this statement is perhaps the most calloused I have ever heard," said UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6676796