Why does booting fail with the error "find: '/var/run': No such file or directory" in RHEL6?

Issue

• The booting process halts with errors pointing to the directory /var/run as shown below:

Mounting local filesystems:               [ OK ]
Enabling local filesystem quotas:         [ OK ]
find: '/var/run': No such file or directory
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line 591: /var/run/utmp: No such file or directory
chgrp: cannot access '/var/run/utmp': No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access '/var/run/utmp': No such file or directory
Enabling /etc/fstab swaps:                [ OK ]