Miners Stuck Together

Their ordeal over, the nine miners who were pulled alive from the Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania are now telling of the horrors they endured 240 feet below the earth's surface - and how they made it through.

The miners survived being trapped for three days in three to four feet of freezing water underground by using their brains and sticking together - literally.

Luck may also have played a role: a report today says if the drill at the mine hadn't broken when it did, early in the rescue effort, it might have gotten through at a time that would have made things worse and drowned the nine men.

The men tied themselves together so all their bodies would be found if they did drown.

They also scrawled last messages to loved ones as they huddled together to keep warm, surrounding by turns whoever was the coldest.

That, plus a steady stream of air warmed to 100 degrees and pumped into the mine, kept them from succumbing to hypothermia and despair.

The men began being pulled to safety, one at a time in a narrow rescue capsule, at 1 a.m. Sunday, faces completely coated with coal, but spirits still intact, with one asking: "What took you guys so long?"

Another asked for chewing tobacco, touching off a flood of tobacco dropped off by well-wishers at the two hospitals where the miners were taken, prompting authorities to appeal for an end to the well-meaning donations.

By the end of the day, six of the miners were home in their own beds, safe and sound, after being checked out by doctors, and three remain in the hospital, after complaining of chest and shoulder pains, the latter attributed to decompression sickness from the trip down deep.

At a news conference Sunday, one of the miners, Harry "Blaine" Mayhugh stood reunited with his wife, Leslie, and with tears in his eyes said that down below, he feared that he'd never see her or their children ever again.

"It was the only day in my life I never kissed my wife before I went to work. It had to be the day," said Mayhugh, whose father-in-law, Thomas Foy, was one of the nine, and has told his family that "he'll never go underground again."

Several of the other miners have said the same, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Richard Schweiker.

Leslie Mayhugh says she never lost hope. "I knew I couldn't lose my dad and my husband, I just knew it."

In fact, it was her dad who first found the hole that had been drilled - their eventual escape route.

Randy Popernack, whose cousin Mark Popernack is one of the nine, says he, too, remained hopeful. "There was a lot of roller-coaster, but I was upbeat the whole time... I am mining people: Never give up, never give up!" explains Popernack.

One of the hardy nine, Robert Pugh, says he celebrated his escape from death by waiting for the sun to come up on Sunday. Despite being exhausted from the ordeal, Pugh just couldn't sleep until he got the chance to see daylight again. And he did.

Doctors at Conemaugh Memorial Center, where the three miners who are still hospitalized are being treated and three others were treated and sent home, and at Somerset Hospital, where three others were treated and released, say the miners are in surprisingly good condition.

"If you were to meet any of these guys on the street right now, you would not know that they were trapped in a cavern full of water for three days," says Dr. Russell Dumire, a trauma surgeon at Conemaugh Memorial. "It's really rewarding for us to see tears of joy instead of tears of sadness at a trauma center."

Starving and dehydrated, the men were taken to two hospitals. Two were flown by helicopter, the rest taken by ambulance. Each had mild symptoms of hypothermia, a cooling of the body temperature that can lead to irregular heartbeat and even death.

Given that the men had been stuck in a dark, sooty chamber that had more than 3 feet of water in it at times, experts expected them to be in much worse shape when they were brought out of the shaft one at a time beginning about 1 a.m. Sunday.

"This is a miracle," said John Weir, spokesman for Black Wolf Coal Co., which operates Quecreek Mine, where the men had been trapped since 9 p.m. Wednesday.

The miners who are still in the hospital are: John Unger, Randy Fogle and Thomas Foy.

Medical personnel said the major reason the miners did not suffer more severe hypothermia may have been the pressurized and heated air that was pumped into the underground chamber beginning on Thursday morning.

"Getting the pipe down with the warm air was probably lifesaving for these individuals," says Dumire.

As crews drilled a shaft to save the men trapped 240 feet underground, all types of emergency equipment and personnel had been dispatched to the scene, including ambulances and 18 helicopters, in case some of them had problems. And there were nine decompression chambers, which were not needed at the time.

Dumire says in addition to hypothermia, the miners also faced problems with light sensitivity and trench foot, a painful condition that can result from immersion in water or exposure to a cold, wet environment for too long.

Once the miners, soaking wet and covered in soot, reached the surface, their biggest concern was hunger, according to Dumire.

"They pretty much devoured anything that we brought into the room," he said. "They were not picky. They just took whatever was brought to them."

The rescue effort did not go smoothly, with drill bits breaking and halting all activity, and long periods in which no sound at all was heard from below, and only faith to sustain the belief that the men were still alive.

It wasn't until the hole for the rescue capsule was dug that rescue workers were finally able to lower a headset down and hear the good news they'd hoped for, as one of the miners trapped below said: "There's nine men ready to get the hell out of here. We need some chew."

Gov. Schweiker appeared before reporters late Saturday night and raised his fists over his head to announce the men were alive.

At the Sipesville Fire Hall, where the families had been gathering, people erupted in celebration. Families cried and hugged and many spilled into the street with hands in the air.

"Wow. Wow. Wow. It's just unbelievable," said mine worker Lou Lepley, who has been working at the mine entrance for three days. "I have no words."

Black Wolf Coal spokesman Weir says it turns out that the men had been tapping on a pipe all along, but the sound couldn't be heard above during much of the rescue operation, partly because of the sound of the heavy equipment being used to reach the men.

The nine became trapped at about 9 p.m. Wednesday, when they accidentally broke into an abandoned, water-filled mine that maps erroneously showed as being 300 feet away.

Mayhugh says a four-foot wall of water - described as authorities as being as much as 60 million gallons - came crashing through the breached wall.

"We tried to outrun it, but it was too fast," recounts Mayhugh.

The men didn't just stand there shivering waiting for help. At one point, they tried to break through another wall, hoping it would bring the water level down.

It just made things worse, and with the water level rising still more, they had to swim in their heavy miner's clothes.

Another, earlier, effort did pay off. When the first floodwaters rushed in, the trapped men were able to get a warning about the water to a second crew of miners down below. And that came in time to allow that second crew to escape.

"They are the heroes," says Doug Custer, one of the miners in the second, luckier crew. "If not for them, there'd be dead bodies."

Federal and state investigations are to begin this week into the cause of the accident, why the map the miners was using was wrong, and the broader safety questions of how mining maps are evaluated and how mining permits are issued.