A broken drill bit frustrated rescuers Friday morning as they frantically tried to save nine miners trapped for a day and a half in a flooded mine shaft 240 feet underground.
\nWork on a rescue shaft being drilled went smoothly until a drill bit broke early Friday, when it hit hard rock or coal about 100 feet down.
\nRescuers want to bore the 2 1\/2-foot-wide hole and send a basket down to retrieve the miners. Gov. Mark Schweiker said it would take time to retrieve and replace the bit.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re stopped,\u201d Schweiker said. \u201cWe have to bring it up and replace it and begin anew. … It puts you in a prayerful mood.\u201d
\nRescuers remained hopeful that some or all of the miners, ages 30 to 55, had survived the flooding of the Quecreek Mine, though they have been trapped in a 4-foot-high chamber since Wednesday evening. Among the fears is that hypothermia \u2014 illness because of exposure to cold \u2014 could develop because miners were exposed to the chilly water.
\nWorkers on Thursday heard several taps on a 6-inch air hole drilled down to where the miners were believed to be. No more tapping was heard overnight, but noise from the drilling and other machinery could have accounted for that.
\nA replacement drill bit was brought in. Crews also needed a special tool to retrieve the broken drill bit, and that was still being flown in. Workers were beginning preparations to drill a second rescue shaft about 75 feet from the first.
\nOfficials originally predicted it would take 18 hours to reach the miners after drilling began.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got quite a few hours of drilling,\u201d Schweiker said.
\nOfficials cautioned that they did not know how many men might still be alive.
\n\u201cThis is a very tricky and dangerous situation, and I don\u2019t want to raise expectations,\u201d said David Hess, Pennsylvania secretary of environmental protection.
\nSaid Betsy Mallison, a spokeswoman for Hess\u2019 department: \u201cWe have not given up hope on the miners. We are working very diligently to get them out.\u201d
\nOne piece of good news was that it appeared the water level inside the mine 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh was dropping as crews pumped water out. It was believed as much as 60 million gallons of water rushed into the mine shaft when the miners inadvertently broached the wall of an adjacent, abandoned mine about 9 p.m. Wednesday.
\nMaps had shown the adjacent mine, closed since the 1950s, to be farther away.
\nThe men were believed to be inside a small, dark, 4-foot-high air pocket, which may or may not be flooded.
\nAt the drill site, in a small depression off the highway between a pasture and a church and cemetery, neighbors sat on a fence Thursday night and watched the scene, brightened by floodlights and accompanied by a rumbling noise.
\nDawn broke at the site Friday with intermittent rain amid occasional flashes of lightning, but the drone of machinery continued as crews worked steadily above the mine, pumping air into the chamber and water out.
\nThrough the thin air shaft drilled earlier, workers could determine that the water stopped rising around 8 p.m. Thursday, said Joseph Sbaffoni, with the state Bureau of Deep Mine Safety.
\nMedical units were standing by, and decompression chambers were also brought in.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re working feverishly; you can sense when people are determined and have their grit about them,\u201d Schweiker said Thursday night.
\nHe toured the site and met with about 80 family members who had gathered privately at a fire hall in nearby Sipesville. Later, officials allowed them a brief visit to the mine, which is about 10 miles from the field where hijacked Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11.
\n\u201cThey could see and hear and feel what was going on,\u201d Hess said. Sbaffoni said Thursday the men were probably sitting in the cramped space, their lamps long since gone out.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s probably wet, cold and dark,\u201d he said. \u201cCoal miners are a special breed. If anybody can get through it, a coal miner can.\u201d
\nSbaffoni said the miners apparently dashed into an air pocket, water rushing past them. Another crew of miners managed to wade to safety in water up to their necks.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just about like being buried alive. You don\u2019t know dark until you\u2019ve been in a coal mine,\u201d said Clark Shaulis, an 82-year-old retired miner who stopped by a nearby church to pray for the crew. \u201cIf they\u2019re still down there, I\u2019m sure of one thing: They\u2019re praying.\u201d
\nThe mine was opened in 2000 by Black Wolf Coal Inc. and employs about 60 miners.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014
\nOn the Net:
\nState mine bureau: http:\/\/www.dep.state.pa.us\/dep\/deputate\/minres\/dms\/dms.htm
\nFederal mine safety: http:\/\/www.msha.gov\/welcome.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A broken drill bit frustrated rescuers Friday morning as they frantically tried to save nine miners trapped for a day and a half in a flooded mine shaft 240 feet underground. Work on a rescue shaft being drilled went smoothly until a drill bit broke early Friday, when it hit hard rock or coal about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}