Pennsylvania rescue teams yesterday afternoon began desperately drilling a second shaft towards an air pocket 240 ft underground where they still hope nine missing miners have taken refuge in their flooded mine.
Drilling on the first 36-inch rescue shaft at the Quecreek Mine, Somerset County, was interrupted at 100 ft overnight, still seven hours from the air pocket, when a drill bit broke. Its retrieval was proving hugely difficult and led to the opening up of another shaft 75 ft away.
Meanwhile, warm air is being pumped down a narrow pipe at pressure to the area where the men are believed to be in a bid both to counter the cold and to preserve an air bubble around them.
State Governor Mark Schweiker was at the site and spent time with family members yesterday. He said he found them to be "tough Pennsylvanians, very resilient, ever so hopeful and very prayerful".
A navy team joined the rescuers, bringing specialist decompression chambers for use if the recovered miners show signs of the bends. That may occur because the air supply to them is being kept at a pressure equivalent to being 40 ft under water. If exposed suddenly to normal air pressure dangerous blot clots could form in their blood.
The accident occurred early Thursday morning Irish time when two crews of nine men about 240 ft underground and about a mile and a half from the entrance accidentally tunnelled into the adjacent Saxman mine, abandoned in the 1950s. Up to 50 million gallons of water is believed to have poured into the mine.
On their charts the abandoned mine should have been some 300 ft away, 100 ft more than the legally required separation zone.
One group, alerted by radio by the other miners, got out of the mine as it filled with water. "Some of the guys were able to get out and were wading in water up to their necks," said Mr Alan Baumgardner, a Somerset County emergency dispatcher. Pumps were yesterday reducing the water level by about a foot an hour.
The nine left behind were believed to be holed up in a four-ft high air pocket some 20 ft below the high water level in the rest of the mine.
Some tapping was heard on the air line on Thursday but the noise of drilling since then has made it impossible to listen for signs of life.
"It's just about like being buried alive. You don't know dark until you've been in a coal mine," said Mr Clark Shaulis, an 82-year-old retired miner who stopped by a nearby church to pray for the crew.
"If they're still down there, I'm sure of one thing: They're praying." Rescuers were particularly worried about the danger of hypothermia from the freezing water, and air pumped down to them was heated to help with the cold. They will also take care that when they break through the change in pressure does not cause a new rush of water into the shaft.
The nine miners range in age from about 30 to the middle-50s, said a spokesman for Black Wolf Coal Co., which owns the mine. All are experienced miners. The company employs 50 to 75 non-union employees, who work three shifts and produce 50,000 tons of coal a month, said a company spokesman, Mr John Weir.
Black Wolf Coal Co. received a permit to open a new shaft in March 1999 near an unnamed tributary of Quemahoning Creek. Mining began a year ago.
There had been at least one other accident at the mine, according to the state Bureau of Deep Mine Safety. No one was injured when a section of the roof collapsed on October 17th.
The mine is just 10 miles northwest of the spot where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed during the September 11th terrorist attacks.
