Mine Disaster At Quecreek

Mine disaster at Quecreek : hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, second session, special hearing, October 21, 2002, Johnstown, PA.

For five days in July 2002, the world's attention was focused on the fate of nine coal miners trapped 245 feet underground in western Pennsylvania, not 13 miles from the horrific end of September 11's Flight 93. Seven hours into their afternoon shift, a machine they were operating suddenly broke through a wall, unleashing a torrent of water from an adjacent abandoned mine. With the miners out of sight and the aboveground heroics largely shielded from view, the drama that captured the public imagination was far from complete. Their desperate struggle to survive as the water continued its inexorable rise was played out in cramped darkness. The final, heart-stopping moments provided the storybook ending, but the real story was yet to be told--until now. The miners are home, the rescuers are back at their day jobs, investigations have begun, and, as the story inside All Nine Alive reveals, what really happened in those desperate hours was more breaktaking than we knew.

When Bill Arnold grabbed his Colt 45 and ran out the door of his home at Dormel Farms near midnight on July 23, 2002, he thought he'd be chasing off a would-be thief from the tool shed. Instead, he encountered two surveyors, friends of his."Billy, there's been an accident in the mine, and there's nine men missing. We think they're trapped under your farm."This is a true American story, a factual account of a string of miraculous events that saved lives and uplifted a nation, as told through the eyes of the dairy farmer who had a front-row seat to The Miracle at Quecreek Mine.

The deepest coal mine in North America was notoriously unpredictable. One late October evening in 1958, it "bumped" - its rock floors heaving up and smashing into rock ceilings. A few miners staggered out, most of the 174 on shift did not. Nineteen men were trapped, plunged into darkness, hunger, thirst, and hallucination. As days and nights passed, the survivors began to hope for death by gas rather than from thirst. Above ground, journalists and families stood in despairing vigil, as rescuers brought out scores of the dead. The hope of finding life undergound faded and families made funeral preparations. Then, a miracle: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe leading to a cave of survivors, then a second group was discovered. A media circus followed. Ed Sullivan, then the state of Georgia, invited survivors to visit. Publicity, politics, and segregation sorted the men differently than they had ordered themselves. Underground, the one black survivor nursed a dying man; in Atlanta, Governor Marvin Griffin said: "I will not shake hands with a Negro." If every great writer has one tale of peril, heroism, and survival, Last Man Out is Melissa Fay Greene's. Using long-lost stories and interviews with survivors, Greene has reconstructed the drama of their struggle to stay alive

The author tells the story of the dramatic rescue of two coal miners in the 1963 cave-in at Sheppton, Pennsylvania. The first time boring was used in a mine rescue. One man was never recovered.

"July 2002 - nine men are trapped in a collapsed mine with no food or drinking water. In their underground grave the waters are rising and the oxygen vanishing. They face imminent death from suffocation or drowning. Miraculously all nine of the miners survived. It took 77 hours to rescue them from a tiny, pitch-black chamber of rock, only 3 feet high. This is their terrifying and moving story. The only official story, told in the miners' own voices, with chapters from their wives, girlfriends and mothers who waited up above with increasing desperation. This is a rare, and raw, book. How did these nine men prepare for death? What did they think about as the waters rose, as breathing became harder and harder-? A nail biting and life-changing account of a nearly tragic disaster."