Posted on 07/28/2002 4:10:52 PM PDT by Alouette
SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) - The nine coal miners who were rescued from a cramped, flooded shaft Sunday decided early in their 77-hour ordeal that they would "live or die as a group," tying themselves together so all their bodies would be found if they drowned.
They also scrawled last messages to loved ones as they huddled together to keep warm 240 feet below the Earth's surface.
"I didn't think I was going to see my wife and kids again," a teary-eyed Blaine Mayhugh told reporters, hours after being pulled out of the Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania.
He, his father-in-law and the seven others were stuck for more than three agonizing days, often in darkness, after water from an abandoned, water-filled mine flooded the shaft where they were working.
A desperate rescue operation that included more than 150 workers, tons of heavy equipment and 18 medical helicopters finally paid off when rescuers reached the miners Sunday morning and pulled them up a narrow shaft, one by one, in a yellow cylindrical capsule.
Though they were covered in coal dust and their heavy-duty clothes were soaked through, the miners emerged in surprisingly good physical condition.
"If you were to meet any of these guys on the street right now, you would not know that they were trapped in a cavern full of water for three days," said Dr. Russell Dumire, a trauma surgeon at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, where six of the men were taken.
One of the miners was in a decompression chamber after experiencing early symptoms of the bends, an excruciating condition caused by sudden changes in pressure, Dumire said. Two others were under observation, including Mayhugh's father-in-law, Thomas Foy, 51.
Foy told family members "he'll never go underground again," said his daughter, Tonya Butler, 26.
At the White House, President Bush "was thrilled to know that all of the miners had been rescued," spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
The miners had two working lights but saved them for forays into the shaft. Mayhugh, 31, said the men were "snuggling each other, laying up against each other, sitting back-to-back to each other, anything to produce body heat."
The miners also huddled around a pipe funneling down warm air.
The miners, Dumire said, "decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group."
Around noon Thursday, Mayhugh asked his boss for a pen when the water in the shaft was rising. "I said, 'I want to write my wife and kids to tell them I love them,'" said Mayhugh, choking back tears.
By 10:16 p.m. Saturday, rescuers had bored through the ceiling where the miners were trapped. The breakthrough let workers drop a telephone and confirm they were alive.
One of the miners reportedly requested chewing tobacco. As a result, Conemaugh hospital was inundated with chewing tobacco though doctors wouldn't immediately allow it, or the beer some miners requested, for fear of dehydration.
At the hospital, hunger overtook the miners, who "pretty much devoured anything that was put in front of them" — doughnuts, sandwiches, soup and coffee, Dumire said.
David Hess, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, promised a joint federal-state investigation to help determine why underground maps apparently showed the abandoned Saxman Mine some 300 feet away from where the miners were working.
The first miner was pulled through the 26-inch wide hole at about 1 a.m. Sunday — to the wild applause of rescuers. His comrades emerged in roughly 15-minute intervals, with the last one appearing at about 2:45 a.m. Some had chipped American flag decals on the sides of their helmets.
The first to come out, 43-year-old Randy Fogle, had reported feeling chest pains in the mine. Hospital officials said he has a history of heart problems and would remain hospitalized until at least Monday.
The miners surprised medical personnel who had prepared to treat them for symptoms of hypothermia or the bends. Decompression chambers, ambulances and 18 helicopters were at the scene 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
After word came the men were alive, the Sipesville Fire Hall, where the families of the men had been gathering, erupted in celebration.
Though the miners had not been heard since Thursday because of the noise of rescue equipment, mining company spokesman John Weir said they "were tapping the whole time they were down there."
The rescue attempt transfixed the nation and the region, a rural area where the hijacked Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11.
The miners became trapped about 9 p.m. Wednesday, when they inadvertently broke into an abandoned, water-filled mine that maps showed to be 300 feet away.
Mayhugh said a 4-foot wall of water — as many as 60 million gallons — came crashing through the breached wall. "We tried to outrun it, but it was too fast," he said.
But they were able to warn a second crew, which escaped.
"They are the heroes. If not for them, there'd be dead bodies," said mine worker Doug Custer, among the group who escaped.
The trapped miners spent roughly five hours in the water, at one point attempting to break through another wall to try to bring the water level down. Instead, the level rose, forcing them to swim in their heavy miners' clothes, Mayhugh said.
Drilling a rescue shaft to the men, who ranged in age from early 30s through early 50s, began more than 20 hours after the accident when a drill rig arrived from West Virginia. Drilling was halted early Friday morning because a 1,500-pound drill bit broke after hitting hard rock about 100 feet down, delaying the effort by 18 hours.
A second rescue shaft was started, and it wasn't until Saturday that measurable progress was being made on both shafts.
Mayhugh's wife, Leslie, said she prayed throughout the ordeal. "I knew I couldn't lose my dad and my husband. I just knew it. It wasn't their day," she said.
Mayhugh said he "feels great" physically. "But emotionally ... it's going to take time to heal."
 |
| Sun Jul 28,12:34 PM ET |
|
The third of the 9 trapped miners at the Quecreek Mine is helped out of the rescue capsule in Somerset, Pennsylvania on July 28, 2002. Despite hunger, fatigue and dangerously cold temperatures, rescuers found all nine men alive and in good condition. (Guy Wathen/Pool via Reuters) |
|
LONG TERM EFFECTS OF DEEP DIVINGThere are several potential long term effects of deep diving of which the recreational or professional trimix diver should be aware. Many of these are still postulated, and remain formally unproven, but enough evidence exists to suggest that damage may be done to the diver's body by a variety of pressure-related processes.
Capillary Atrophication and Aseptic Bone Necrosis
Perhaps the best known of the long term problems is Aseptic Bone Necrosis, where the destruction of capillaries within bone tissues causes local necrosis of the bone - that is, the bone tissue effectively dies and falls apart. Traditionally, the long bones (thighs, shins, arms) were most at risk, with the heads of joints at shoulder and pelvis especially at risk. At one time this was though to occur primarily in commercial saturation divers, but it has been fairly commonly recorded in recreational divers, where there is some evidence to suggest that it affects the center sections of bones rather than the ends. What causes it is not entirely known, other than it is associated with capillary Atrophication. Such Atrophication may be associated with rapid pressurization and/or depressurization, where different tissues within the bloodstream on and offgas at different rates. This means that certain of the blood's constituent tissues may at different times during descent or ascent act as effective dams within the smallest capillary beds, creating tiny local embolisms or micro-Atrophication. Though this is perhaps most crucial in bones, capillary beds also exist in other vital areas of the body such as the brain, soft tissues such as the liver, kidneys, eyes, etc. At present, alterations to capillary bed structure in these other tissues are best described as "change" rather than damage, until more research is done on both cause and effect.
Research on Aseptic Bone Necrosis shows that affects approximately 5% of divers (both recreational and commercial) to some degree or another. Deep mixed gas diving may be one contributory factor, as may rapid pressurization/ depressurization, but the increase in symptoms evinced in recreational divers who do not undertake such practices suggests that the problem still warrants further research before too many conclusions can be drawn.
BUBBLE FORMATION
Micro-bubbles forming during decompression, though not creating any formal symptoms of decompression illness, may result in long term CNS damage to the spinal cord. Postmortems in divers who have not reported any symptoms of DCI during life have still been found to have significant damage to the spinal cord and central nervous system.
Those who have had formal decompression events may have significantly greater long term problems, especially divers who have suffered multiple type II bends.
Such "invisible damage" may or may not be associated with deep diving. It is possible that now out-dated diving practices may have contributed to these (e.g. faster ascent rates) and that individual physiology may also play a part. To a degree, all life activity, above or below water, contributes to the eventual long term decay of the body, and the older we get the more damage has been picked up along the way. It is possible to overreact to physiological "possibilities", and it must also be remembered that diving of any sort has a very low incidence of long term serious physiological damage per individual diver when compared with other activities.
However, when formal damage does occur it should be treated seriously. Getting decompression illness may result in small localized damage or it may contribute to longer term damage, such as possible brain lesions, which may in turn create later problems from reduced mental or physical function to premature senility. Divers of all sorts, and mixed gas divers in particular, should be aware of current research in diving medicine, and should keep themselves up to date with changes in our knowledge and understanding of diving medicine.
Hopkins in Baltimore had two of them in 1983. One reason they told me was because drugs have an easier time getting into the bloodstream.
I got into a nasty accident on a bike and gotta helicopter ride to shock-trauma that year.
I needed a few operations to make things work again and I woke from most of those in the hyperbaric. I even had some hyperbaric therapy which was basically sitting in there for 2-4 hrs a day.
Seemed to work, I can walk again.
IOW, draining the water decompressed the miners.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
