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As mine search nears end, community leans on faith

HUNTINGTON, Utah - People here believe in miracles. Small ones, where a kind word or a soft touch can make all the difference. Big ones, too - like finding six men in a collapsed mountain mine nearly three weeks after they were trapped.

As a drill finished chewing through rock and coal Saturday in a final effort to reach the miners, their friends and families clung to what they called an unyielding faith that will carry them through, whatever the outcome.

The latest hole, reaching a depth of more than 1,700 feet, broke through a chamber too small for the men to survive, a lawyer for several of the men's families said Saturday. The Crandall Canyon Mine's co-owner has said this hole, the sixth drilled into the mountain, will be the last effort to find a sign of the men, who may not have survived the cave-in Aug. 6.

However, the families' attorney, Colin King, said mine officials did not rule out the possibility of a seventh hole during a meeting with families Saturday.

Previous holes have yielded only grainy video images and poor air samples, and efforts to signal the miners have been met with silence. Tunneling into the mine was abandoned after another collapse killed three rescue workers and injured six others.

Against the odds that loom over the mountain, though, the people in central Utah's coal belt still have hope. It's a belief built on faith in God, in one another and in the tradition of coal mining, to hear them tell it.

"They say there's no way to get them out. But there's always that little sliver of hope," said Tammy Pierce, whose friend Kerry Allred is among the missing.

Pierce, 47, cites stories she has heard over the years about miners surviving underground for long periods. Miners are hardy people used to extreme conditions and trained to survive, she said.

There are outward signs of this belief everywhere: It's in the simple word - "pray" - painted on car windows and written on signs hung from store fronts and picture windows. It's in the moments of silence and the candlelight vigils held on street corners and in parks.

It seems just about everybody in these communities knows somebody involved in the mine disaster - those trapped, those killed or injured or those working to save them.

"You're dependent on each other for your life sometimes and if something happens to somebody, everybody dives in, they don't ask no questions," said Al Gray, 81, a retired federal mine safety investigator.

Although he said he can't speak for others, Gray said faith was an important tool that he carried with him into the mines. "If I didn't have a lot of faith, I'd never gone underground."

Penelope Diamanti, 44, recently stood a few feet from Allred's son at a benefit to raise money for the families of the missing men and the three rescuers who were killed.

She has never met the Allreds, but that mattered little. "They know they are not alone."

[Last modified August 26, 2007, 01:45:09]