Mine rescue training camp specializes in surprises

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - Rescuers tunneling toward six trapped miners in a collapsed Utah mine have lived through cave-ins, smoke and cut communications -- in a training camp where "surprises" are the name of the game.

A training school at an abandoned silver mine in Colorado is being used to hone skills so rescuers can learn to safely reach and extricate miners trapped underground.

"We expose miners and rescue crews to as many surprises as possible so they can work on their emergency decision-making," said Harry Lovely, a mine rescue trainer with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.

Lovely trains crews at the Edgar Mine outside Idaho Springs, Colorado, about 40 miles west of Denver, the only such underground facility in the United States.

Rescue crews trying to find six miners after Monday's collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah underwent training at the camp last year, said Bill York-Feirn, Colorado's mine safety manager.

There has been an increase in the number of rescue teams training at the site since the Sago Mine disaster that killed 12 West Virginia coal miners last year, York-Feirn added.

Rescuers in training in Colorado are exposed to realistic scenarios that they would encounter in working underground.

Lovely said miners face the disorienting noise of heavy machinery and the eerie silence when mechanical equipment is shut down in a mine.

CLAMMY CONDITIONS

Any miner has to become accustomed to working in a cold, damp environment, Lovely added.

A typical mine has a temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius), and water from natural sources, or pumped in for dust suppression, is always present, contributing to the clammy conditions.

Miners also must work in cramped quarters and inky blackness. "If there are no lights for some reason, it's so dark you cannot see your hand to touch your nose," he said.

Trainees are taught to react quickly when building support structures and climbing up and down ladders -- all with obscured vision from smoke and dust pumped into the shaft.

Lovely, who responded to two mine fires as a rescuer in his 20-year mining career, said until the trapped miners in Utah are located, the main job is up to surveyors and engineers to pinpoint their location and to safely remove rubble from the collapse that has blocked pathways.

It took rescuers 78 hours to dig down to find nine miners trapped at the Quecreek mine in Pennsylvania in 2002. That set the U.S. standard of success, Lovely said.