After drilling two boreholes at the Murray Energy mine in Utah yesterday, a third vertical hole yielded the same results.

A first attempt to drop a microphone down the shaft measuring more than 1400 feet was unsuccessful due to a bend near the bottom, and no response to tapping was returned. As of press time, a second attempt to drop it down into the pocket had not been attempted.

“It's disappointing that we haven't found them alive yet, but there is every hope," mine co-owner Robert Murray said in an afternoon press conference.

“I am still very optimistic that we will find these miners alive. There is real reason to believe that," he added. “I still remain very, very hopeful."

But as days turn into weeks, others in the coal industry aren't so optimistic.

“There's always a chance. You have to hang on to that chance,” said Wheeling Jesuit University president Davitt McAteer, former head of the US Mine Safety and Health Administration.

“But realistically it is small, quite small. You would have to have every single break and divine intervention to successfully extract these guys.”

MSHA also offered an update Wednesday afternoon, including the status of the underground efforts.

“There was another significant bump overnight, but all workers were accounted for and are fine,” the agency said.

“The continuous mining machine, which suspended activity overnight due to broken cutter head shafts, is currently operational. There are 36 mine rescue personnel underground, including six MSHA employees.”

While Murray and other mine officials maintain that retreat mining did not play a role in the incident, the group has acknowledged past retreating at the operation. It has been more than a year since retreat mining was last employed at the operation near Huntington, about 150 miles south of Salt Lake City.

“There's no connection between retreat mining and the natural disaster that occurred here," Murray said Tuesday.

“I've said that from the beginning, and that's the way it will eventually come out."

According to the Associated Press, some industry experts are suggesting a collapse of two sections of the mine in March of this year may have been a warning sign of things to come. The mine was not closed at that time, the sources said, but mining moved to a new section and continued following the cave-in.

The six workers still unaccounted for at the mine, part of the Genwal complex owned by Murray Energy division Utah American, are Louis Alonso Hernandez, 23; Manuel Sanchez, 41; Kerry Allred, 57; Carlos Payan, 20s; Brandon Phillips, 24; and Don Erickson, 50.