Rescue Workers Will Bore One Last Hole

Workers will bore a final hole in a bid to locate six miners lost in a Utah mine, but if that fails, the operation will be halted and the mine closed as a kind of memorial tomb, the owner said yesterday. "We're not going to risk more live people to get dead bodies," said Bob Murray. Three rescue workers died in a collapse last week.

The decision to close the mine permanently comes after suggestions Monday that undamaged areas  might be reopened drew scathing criticism, the Los Angeles Times reports. "I will never go back in there," Murray said in an interview that will be broadcast today on NPR. "It's a deadly mountain, and I'm not going near it." Mine experts said the decision also made business sense, given ongoing safety issues and the fact that the mine had only about 30 months of reserves remaining. (More Utah stories.)