Lacee Taylor, center, a girlfriend of Brandon Phillips, one of six coal miners trapped inside the Crandall Canyon Mine, talks to reporters as Taylor's mother Jackie watches on Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007, in Huntington, Utah. At right is Brandon's sister Cassie Phillips. Officials said a sixth exploratory hole 1,700 feet below ground would be drilled beginning Thursday, officials said, and Kuzar said it will be in the area where the miners were last believed to have been working. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Relatives of six miners trapped deep inside a Utah coal mine are holding out hope the sixth and last borehole will provide the miracle they've craved for more than two weeks.
Other holes drilled into the Crandall Canyon mine have failed to reveal signs of life. The sixth hole is to be drilled Thursday into an area where the miners were last believed to have been working.
"This is the last hole," mine co-owner Bob Murray said at a news conference Wednesday night. Drilling it, he said, will "bring closure to me that I could never get them out alive."
But Jackie Taylor, whose daughter Lacee dates one of the six men missing since an Aug. 6 cave-in, said relatives and friends are insisting that more be done.
She issued a plea Thursday for the rescue effort to continue, even though three men died trying to tunnel toward the miners.
"We are so appreciative to all of the rescue members and their families. Don't get us wrong, we are so appreciative," Taylor told NBC's "Today." "Our love and our prayers go out to all of their family members. But our family members are still under there. They're underground. We need that closure in our lives also."
Punching through the fifth borehole Wednesday, rescuers found only a 6-inch void in the mine 1,500 feet down, federal officials said.
No noise was heard from the hole after a microphone was lowered and workers banged on the drill steel, said Jack Kuzar, a district manager for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. A video camera had not yet been put down the hole, nor had oxygen readings been measured, Kuzar said.
Attempts to tunnel through the broken mine shaft toward the miners were halted after a second cave-in killed two miners and a federal safety officer. Six others were injured.
Sonny J. Olsen, a lawyer and spokesman for relatives of the miners, said the families don't want the search to end until the men are found.
"Regardless if it takes three months to wait for the seismic activity to stop, they want some method to go down and get their families," Olsen said.
Locator map of Salt Lake City, Emery County and Huntington.
Today rescue workers will drill a sixth hole into the collapsed Utah mine in a final effort to resuce the trapped miners who have been missing since August 6.

The previous holes, which have been dug as deep as 1,500 feet (460 m) underground at the Crandall Canyon Mine, have not produced any signs of the trapped miners.

Bob Murray, the mine's co-owner, said this sixth attempt to reach the miners will be the last. Murray also said that this last attempt will bring him closure. However, he realizes the families may never find the closure they are calling for. A spokesman for the families said they do not want the rescue efforts to stop until they find the men. One family member said, "He doesn't realize that what we have now is hope, and maybe our family members are not alive, but we want our bodies out...We want proper burials."

Mining will not be resumed in the area, Murray said.