Utah mine owner candid, combative

HUNTINGTON, Utah — He's a bulldog in a 5-foot-11 frame, bellowing about earthquakes, global warming, helicopter noise and traffic on national TV as six of his miners lay trapped underground.

Bob Murray, though, prefers another description for himself: underdog.

A fourth-generation miner who grew up poor in southeastern Ohio, Murray chose mining over medical school and says he has the scars — which he readily displays — that come from years underground.

He considers himself a simple miner ("That's all I am. That's all I am."), despite rising through the industry to become chairman of the nation's 12th-largest coal company, Murray Energy, of Cleveland.

What he has become this week is the very public and complex face of the nation's latest mine disaster — so belligerent at times that members of Congress have criticized him.

Murray's company is part-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, where six workers were trapped 1,500 feet down in a cave-in early Monday.

Rescue crews struggled Wednesday to drill two narrow holes — one just 2 ½ inches across, the other less than 9 inches — in a painfully slow effort to get air and food to the trapped miners. Officials held out hope that the men survived the collapse and that the emergency supplies would help keep them alive while other rescuers tried to punch their way through the rubble in the mine shaft and bring them out.

Since the collapse, Murray, 67, has been the main spokesman in front of the cameras, holding nothing back as he takes on scientists, the media and federal regulators. His main beef has to do with the possible cause of the collapse, which Murray insists was triggered by a magnitude-3.9 earthquake. Government seismologists say the ground-shaking was caused not by a quake, but by the cave-in itself.

Murray spent much of one news briefing Tuesday angrily defending his earthquake theory, declaring at one point: "I'm going to prove it to you." He then spoke of building his company from a mortgaged home — "The United States of America is a GREAT country!" — and made a pitch for coal as an essential industry while bashing global-warming proposals as something that would eliminate the coal industry and "increase your electric rates four to fivefold."

At the same time, he bemoaned the frustratingly slow progress of the rescue operation and spoke with passion and determination about reaching the men, saying: "The Lord has already decided whether they're alive or dead. But it's up to Bob Murray and my management to get access to them as quickly as we can."

While not mentioning Murray by name, two members of Congress — including Democratic Rep. George Miller, who chairs the House committee that has jurisdiction over the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration — issued a statement saying the briefing failed to provide the most accurate possible information and urging that further briefings be conducted by MSHA officials.

"The families ... need and have a right to the most credible, objective, and up-to-date information available about the status of the rescue effort," the statement read.

But Murray was back at the microphones in his characteristic sweater vest Wednesday, dismissing the notion that the mine collapse was caused by a method known as "retreat" mining. The technique involves miners working their way out of a mostly exhausted mine by excavating coal in the rock pillars that support the roof of the mine. As the coal is extracted, the pillars and the mine roofs eventually fall down.

The mine had a permit to use this approach, and Robert Friend, deputy assistant secretary of the MSHA, said Wednesday night that while the cause of the collapse is still undetermined, it is clear that "there was retreat mining where these miners are." Of Murray's denials that retreat mining played a role, Friend said, "I can't speculate as to what he meant."

Holding back never has been Murray's style. He has testified testily about climate change before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, butting heads with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. He called Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., "anti-American" for suggesting the nation needed a president who is pro-labor. He sued a Pennsylvania agency over environmental regulations on which Murray's firm blamed the shutdown of a mine.

"What you're seeing is Bob. He tells things exactly like he thinks that it is," said R. Larry Grayson, a professor of mining engineering at Penn State University who knows Murray. "He doesn't mince words."

In 2001, Murray was acquitted of charges that he assaulted an environmental activist fighting Murray's plans to mine beneath a 400-year-old forest in Ohio. Murray was accused of throwing Chad Kister into a wall outside a hearing room. Murray claimed the accusations were politically and financially motivated.

The United Mine Workers, which represents workers at one of Murray's Ohio mines, has had a prickly relationship with Murray. "He's a very volatile man ... ," union spokesman Phil Smith said. "He's like the old Forrest Gump line: a box of chocolates — you never know what you're going to get."

As far as the safety of Murray's mines, "generally speaking, it's not particularly better or particularly worse than any other mine operator in the country," Smith said.

Material from The Associated Press and The Washington Post is included in this report.