As he keeps watch outside the Utah coal mine where six of his employees have been trapped since Monday, Robert E. Murray angrily fends off suggestions that it was his company's mining technique, and not an earthquake, that caused the collapse 1,500 feet below ground.Murray's confrontational stand outside the Crandall Canyon mine is just one more battle in a war he has been waging in defense of an industry he believes is unjustly vilified. In the past year, Murray has emerged as one of coal's most ardent defenders against charges that it is driving global warming, arguing on Capitol Hill and in interviews that restricting coal would decimate the U.S. economy.
"I know what's going to happen to families . . . and I cannot sit back and let it happen," Murray said in a lengthy interview with The Washington Post earlier this summer. "I'm an American first, and I resent extremely that what you are doing is destroying the American economy and causing the deterioration of the American way of life."
Yesterday, he told reporters at the scene that rescuers were seeking to drill a hole within two days to provide the miners with air, water, "everything they need, even a toothbrush and comb." He repeated that it could be at least a week until the miners could be brought out, after rescuers were forced to give up the fastest route, an old mine shaft, because of falling rock.
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