US: Nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were buried 240 feet underground since Wednesday were brought to the surface unharmed early yesterday morning.
"All nine are alive . . . It's an incredible development, an amazing development," the state governor, Mr Mark Schweiker told journalists, his eyes filling with tears, after drillers had breached the shaft where the men were holed up.
"What took you guys so long?" one of the miners asked, according to a rescuer. Each of the men was lifted out individually at 15-minute intervals in a 22-in wide rescue capsule and taken immediately for medical examination. All were pronounced well, although two were suffering from mild hypothermia.
Mr Ron Svonavec, one of the local rescue team, was at the top of the rescue shaft when contact was first made. He said one of the miners said: "There's nine men ready to get the hell out of here. We need some chew."
The drama at Quecreek Mine in Somerset County began on Wednesday night, when two nine-member gangs of miners, misled by faulty maps, accidentally bored into the neighbouring, abandoned Saxman Mine, flooding Quecreek with more than 50 million gallons of water.
The Saxman Mine hadn't been active in decades and had filled with ground-water through the years.
As water rushed into the shaft where they were working they were able to warn a second crew, which escaped.
"They knew what was coming. We didn't. They are the heroes. If not for them, there'd be dead bodies," said miner Mr Doug Custer, among the group who escaped.
Following days of intensive drilling on the site, interrupted for nearly a day when a 1,500-lb drill bit was broken on hard rock and then proved difficult to retrieve, a crew punched a hole into the 4 ft-high air pocket where the men were believed to be sheltering at 10:16 p.m. on Saturday night.
Rescuers then lowered a telephone down an air shaft 6 inches in diameter and made contact with the miners a short time later, officials said. They had been reluctant until then to do so before for fear of blocking the supply of heated, pressurised air which both kept the cold and water at bay. The water temperature is reported to have been 55 degrees.
Though the miners had not been heard since Thursday because of the noise of rescue equipment, a mining company spokesman said they "were tapping the whole time they were down there".
Pumping water from the mine from another outlet brought its level inside down far enough to equalise the pressure in the air pocket so that when the breakthrough occurred, the safe extraction of the men was relatively easy.
Shortly before 1 a.m. yesterday, 43-year-old Randall Fogle of Garrett, Somerset County, became the first of the miners returned to the surface in the capsule. He complained of chest pain and was flown to Conemaugh Memorial Medical Centre in Johnstown.
As the helicopter lifted off, cheers erupted from hundreds of onlookers, family and friends, watching the rescue effort from a nearby road.
"This is a miracle," said a teary-eyed Mr John Weir, owner of the Black Wolf Coal Company which operates the mine.
Asked what the three-day ordeal said about the character of coal miners, Mr Weir responded: "This doesn't tell me nothing about a coal miner. They're the toughest person that walks the earth."
The site is about 10 miles from the field where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on September 11th last year. On Saturday, relatives of the Flight 93 victims sent the miners' families a e-mail message of support.
Since 1870, 58,000 Pennsylvania miners have been killed on the job, but there has been only one fatality in the last couple of years.
However, Black Wolf Coal, which employs 50-75 non-union employees and produces 50,000 tonnes of coal a month, has been cited 26 times for minor violations of federal mine safety regulations since March 20th, 2001.
