Nine US Miners Rescued After Being Trapped Three Days

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 29, 2002

Nine US Miners Rescued After Being Trapped Three Days

All nine coal miners were rescued early Sunday morning from a flooded mine in eastern United States where they were trapped more than three days ago.

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All nine coal miners were rescued early Sunday morning from a flooded mine in eastern United States where they were trapped more than three days ago.

The miners were brought up one by one by a rescue capsule, which was lowered down a rescue shaft that broke through to the cavity 73 meters underground where they had stayed since late Wednesday.

The first miner was pulled out shortly before 1:00 a.m. (0500 GMT), helicopters rushed the miners to hospitals for possible injuries or hypothermia. The water temperature in the mine is as low as 10 Celsius, a condition in which hypothermia begins to set in after 48 hours.

Before the miners were pulled out, a smiling Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker called it a "miracle" when he announced ata news conference that all nine miners are alive.

"We believe all nine are in pretty good shape ...They're eager to come up," he said at a news conference at the scene, about 96 kilometers southeast of Pittsburgh.

Rescuers, families and colleagues hugged and cheered after rescuers talked to the trapped miners through a communications device lowered down a 15-cm diameter air hole.

The miners were trapped in the Que Creek mine in rural SomersetCounty shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday) when they unexpectedly breached an abandoned mine filled with millions of gallons of water.

They dashed into an air pocket about 60 meters from where they hit the abandoned mine. Their location was confirmed when the air hole broke early Thursday after engineers had mapped the most likely spot and contacted with the miners through tapping.

After three days of desperate drilling, rescue workers broke through at about 10:16 p.m. Saturday (0216 GMT Sunday) to the darkand cramped air pocket the miners had been staying. They contactedwith the miners about one hour later.

The drilling was delayed by 18 hours on Friday after a large drill bit broke after hitting hard rock about 30 meters down.

Pennsylvania requires 60 meters of solid rock be maintained between mines, and officials said the miners believed they had been about 90 meters away from the abandoned mine. Officials said the mine maps miners used were apparently wrong.

Thirteen miners were killed last September in explosions at a mine in Alabama, the deadliest coal mining accident since 1984.

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