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A slow summer sweat at drill site

A fast food restaurant sign a few miles from the Quecreek mine asks for prayer for the miners on Friday.

SOMERSET, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- At the drilling site, time drags. The spin of the bit boring the main hole is painfully slow.

The bit spins a few turns, then stops; then they have to pull it up slightly, reposition it and sink it down again.

Meanwhile, the summer heat has arrived. Thunderstorms rumble in the distance. There is torpor over the whole site.

Family members and VIPs are positioned on a hillside about 50 feet about the main drilling site – which, until about 48 hours ago was a cow pasture. One of the owners of the property can be seen scampering around with her camera, chronicling the damage being done to her fields.

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection are positioned on several bales of hay just above the rig. Members of the special medical response team lounge in their fluorescent green trucks a few yards up the hill.

CNN NewsPass Video    •  CNN's Jeff Flock visits an abandoned Pa. mine   •  Surveyor used GPS to locate miners   •  Rescued miners go home   •  Miners express appreciation  MORE STORIES   •  Pennsylvania panel to explore mining accident   •  Flooded mine could be idle for months   •  Pa. governor: Mine's operator 'owes answers'   •  A turning point in the rescue effort   •  Miners braved harrowing conditions   •  Previous mining accidents were minor » Story archive  RESOURCES   •  Jeff Goodell: Despair turns to joy   •  Gov. Schweiker: Mine probe to seek answers   •  Rescued miner: 'It was a team effort'   •  Why we burn coal  EXTRA INFORMATION   •  Gallery: The rescued miners   •  Gallery: Rescue quotes   •  Graphic: Diagram of the Quecreek Mine   •  Map: Mining accident   •  Timeline: What happened, and when

Except for three or four guys standing on the deck of the rig, monitoring the progress of the bit, nothing much is happening at all. With cows grazing in the nearby fields, the incessant roar of the generators and the news helicopters hovering above, the mood almost feels more like a country fair than a national disaster.

But if you ask Elmer Lloyd, the work is going a little too fast.

"I don't want to criticize anyone," said Lloyd, scooping up a mouthful of lukewarm beef and broccoli that he grabbed from the lunch table that's been set up in a nearby barn, "but drill bits usually snap off when you are in too big of a hurry. Maybe if everyone slowed down, we'd get to these guys a little bit quicker."

Lloyd works for Falcon Drilling out of Indiana, and he is part of a drilling crew that already has punched one hole in the Earth a few miles away to help drain some of the water out of the mine. He is covered head to toe in sand and dirt, and, paradoxically, seems to be in a big hurry himself.

The bandana under his hardhat is soaked with sweat; his eyes are red; his teeth caked with silt. He chugs down a fruit punch Powerade -- the drink of choice at the drill site -- then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Down below, his team is ready to start drilling again in the hole where the bit broke off earlier. A new carbon bit arrived a few hours ago on the back of a pickup, looking like an enormous piece of jewelry.

Does Lloyd think the men trapped below are still alive?

"The way I look at it," he says, "if the good Lord wants them to be rescued, we'll do it. If He doesn't, nothing we do is going to make any difference."

Jeff Goodell is the author of "Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family." He is working on a book about coal and energy in the United States.