Page 5 - Methane Levels News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Who are ready, willing, able. they're there in the mine. ready to go in. you just excellent illustration of all the different holes they're drilling in right now. five holes. one of which has reached that mark at 1100 feet in. they still have to finish four others. test those methane levels. determine it's safe to get in there. once that happens and we don't know when that is, that is when they can go in. >> brooke, is there some sense of where these miners may be or are they looking for those pockets, thoses are cue pockets where they hope they would have gone? and how far would that be once ...

Violations. what is going on here? >> you know, i don't know. that certainly would not have happened at a mine where the workers were represented by a union. we have local union safety committees that make sure that issues like high methane levels, coal dust accumulations, ventilation problems. if something like that's going on at a union-represented mine like it was going on at this mind, likelihood is we would have withdrawn from work. >> what's the next move? what can come out of this investigation? >> well, i think we need to -- the first and foremost find out exactly what happened here. f...

Warning. that is when all these guys owp this mine, these rescue crew members, they'll be calling an all-quiet on the mountain, and they'll shoot these three shots and that essentially if, in fact, the miners are in the mine, if they're alive, if they can hear them, that is essentially a warning to these miners saying, we're here, help is on the way, but they have to wait until they test the methane levels, if it's safe. because if, in fact, these four miners are okay, if they're holed up in this rescue chamber, which is what everyone is hoping, the worry is that the air is not clean, they hea...

I can tell you the state regulation and federal regulation, they're on top. they do the inspecting. the charge is to keep our mines as safe and our miners in the safest work conditions. the violations you're talking about, those have to be addressed. those cannot be tolerated at those levels. they have to be addressed. but the bottom line is, it works this way. if there's a violation and it's not cured, things shut down and stop. so people have the right to cure, if you will. the other thing is, they said that three times previously they had to stop the work because of the high methane levels....

And in the 4:00 period they'll keep analyzing that air and when they see the methane levels have gotten down to a safe zone then they'll tell those rescue crews potentially as maybe later this afternoon to go back on in and they figure it will probably take five or six hours for them to make a dent into the area of the mine where they believe the four reminding miners might be and being able to ascertain their fate. >> you had a chance to talk to the ceo of this mine when nobody had gotten to him yet, and a lot of people have been saying. okay. what is it going take to make these mines safer? ...