Four weeks after the mine collapse that trapped 6 men in Utah, hope has dwindled and the rescue mission has been called off. Officials believe the six men to be dead.
The pain the families are feeling right now must be unimaginable. Not knowing for a fact one way or another and being told that they will not keep looking, the will never know if the men are really dead or not when the search has been given up.
Please keep those families in your thoughts and prayers.
With the search called off for six miners trapped nearly 2,000 feet underground by an Aug. 6 cave-in, the mine has become a tomb in the scenic mountains of the Manti-La Sal National Forest.
Despite repeated pleas from their families, there are no plans to recover the bodies of Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration says it's too dangerous to risk any more lives for a recovery effort. Ten days after the initial collapse, three rescuers working underground were killed and six injured in a second cave-in.
As the spotlight from the tragedy fades in central Utah, the miners' families join a unique brotherhood no one wants to be a part of - one where grief is exacerbated by the uncertainty of a loved one's final resting place and the inability to say goodbye.
"It's pretty hard to come to that closure when you don't see the body and don't have the certainty of what really happened. In this particular case, you probably have more uncertainty. Even if you believed the person is deceased at this point, it's unclear about how the death experience occurred," said Dale Lund, a gerontology and sociology professor at the University of Utah who is an expert on bereavement.
Heartbreaking.
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