Mine boss vows to still search ‘evil mountain’

‘I was the first man in’
During an AP interview in the wee hours of Wednesday, Murray described the scene of the second collapse.

He said he rushed into the mine in his street clothes and began digging out the men, buried under 5 feet of coal, with his bare hands. “I never hesitated to go in there. I was the first man in and the last man out,” he said.

He said he later dropped out of a debriefing with federal officials and began wandering around the mine yard in the moonlight, reliving the collapse. He said he broke down.

“I came apart,” he said. “I was under a doctor’s care for a couple days.”

A funeral for rescuer Gary Jensen, a mine safety inspector, was held Wednesday.

Murray a target, source of anger
Murray, 67, has been a target of families’ anger over the suspended tunneling efforts and the decision to not dig a hole big enough for a rescue capsule to be lowered into the mine. Other critics and mine experts have questioned whether mining should have been conducted at Crandall Canyon at all because of the potential for collapses.

Murray spoke bitterly of the United Mine Workers of America, which has called his company callous for planning to resume mining at other parts of 5,000-acre mine.

“They’re twisting it all around to discredit me and my company,” he said. He accused the union of using the disaster at the nonunion mine as a recruiting opportunity.

After the first collapse, Murray said repeatedly that the men could have survived and he would bring them home, alive or dead. But he retreated from that view after the deaths of the rescue workers.

‘Safety first, then production’
He re-emerged Monday to announce that the trapped miners would likely remain entombed in the mine.

Murray said there was no indication before the initial collapse that the mine was anything but stable.

“I have weekly reports from the mine, and they were telling me that the mining in this mine was going better in the last couple months than it ever had,” he said. “Safety first, then production. That’s all we focus on, safety.”

Most workers at Crandall Canyon have been given jobs at two other mines in central Utah’s coal belt, although a small crew remains at Crandall Canyon, he said.

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