Nine men were rescued without serious injury after spending 77 hours trapped in a water-filled stope of an underground coal mine in Pennsylvania, 90 km southeast of Pittsburgh.
As much as 225,000 cubic metres of water rushed into the area where the men were working. They were able to warn a second crew, which managed to escape.
Rescue crews bored through the ceiling of the 1.2-metre-high chamber. The breakthrough allowed workers to drop a phone line to the miners almost 75 metres below and confirm that they were alive. Meanwhile, air was being pumped into the chamber at a temperature of more than 38 to warm them before anyone at the surface knew they were alive.
Drilling a rescue shaft to the men did not begin until more than 20 hours after the accident, because workers had to wait for a drill rig to arrive from West Virginia.
To complicate matters, drilling was halted when a 680-kg drill bit broke after hitting hard rock about 30 metres down, delaying the effort by 18 hours.
After hours of drilling and setbacks for rescuers, all nine miners emerged from the mine in good condition. They suffered minor hypothermia, and one had signs of decompression sickness.
At a press conference after the incident, one of the miners quipped, “The company better be paying overtime.”
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