theonlysaneone wrote:
Guys, really. Do you think signing this petition is going to get those miners out of the hole?
I'm not educated in mining technology (and neither are any of you) but do the math. 30 inches is two and a half feet. That's almost the length of your arm. The area of that cross-section is 706.85 square inches, or 4.91 square feet. Multiply that by the 1500 feet they're supposed to be in the mine, and you have 7265 cubic feet of rock they would have to move just to get down there. They would have to move it up and out of that hole, and once they managed that, hopefully the miners would be at the bottom of that hole. Hopefully. It took them days to drill the 8.5 inch hole, if they had started working on this 30-inch hole, they STILL wouldn't be done.
I do know quite a bit about mining...since its one of the biggest majors at my old college. Our mascot is named Joe Miner for a reason (we're the UMR Miners)
Drilling a hole, camera or no camera, was never going to do much good. Drilling can also cause further collasp of the mine, making matters worse.
It is sad that there is no recovery effort for the bodies...but its kinda like this:
when a battleship sinks these aboard who do not float to the surface are generally left on board the sunken ship. Rarely were those boats raised up again. They serve as a sort of grave. A resting place for the souls it claimed.
At this point there is little hope for the miners to be found alive. They died doing a job they liked. Why not just let the mine serve as a grave and as an example for future mines to learn from.
we've lost 6 lives here. But from that we can learn to protect thousands more. The sadest part is that it ever happened in the 1st place.
My friends who are going into geology and mining have followed this story very closely. I hear about it daily from several of them. So trust me, their lives are not going unnoticed.
heres a bit from yahoo news:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_ ... Jq28JI2ocA