'What took you guys so long?'

The nine miners stuck down a Pennyslvania mine in rising, freezing water for nine days thought they were going to drown. But now, with a Disney movie about the disaster and a country in search of heroes, they are celebrities - experiencing all the problems that brings. Andrew Morton reports

The voice on the other end of the phone was urgent, loud and clearly terrified. "Get the f**k out! Get the f**k out! We hit water and it's coming. Get out and don't wait! I'm not kidding ya." It was the first warning of impending disaster.

Miner Dennis "Harpo" Hall was alerting a parallel crew, working 150 metres (500 feet) below them, that the two shifts in the number one mine were in big trouble. The cutting machine operator, Mo Popernack, had driven through the rock and into a disused mine, unleashing an underground reservoir containing some 60 million gallons of stagnant water.

While Mo was left stranded and isolated from his co-workers by the force of water, the remainder of his crew tried vainly to make their escape. Crouching low, they plunged through the freezing water that was soon past their knees, its surging power threatening to pull them down with every step. "It was so noisy we couldn't hear each other scream," says miner John Unger.

They were too late. By the time they reached the dip in the pathway they could see the water had reached the roof.

Exhausted and close to panic, the men now clawed their way back, this time fighting the driving current. At times the water was up to their necks, splashing around their mouths and noses, and they found themselves swimming against a murderous rip tide. Finally, after maybe an hour, soaked and trembling, they regained drier ground and went in search of Popernack.

They rescued him using a low-slung battery-operated scoop, normally used to collect coal and rock from the face. Now the nine of them were together, in the darkness, awaiting an almost certain death by drowning.

It was July 24th, 2002, at Quecreek mine in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and 75 metres (240 feet) above their heads, a group of men huddled in the moonlight over underground maps. It was painfully obvious to these assorted mine officials that the odds were stacked against the men underground. The only possible chance was to drill down to the highest point inside the mine in the hope that the miners had gathered there. "Our hearts were in our mouths. The water was rising, the clock was ticking and we needed to do something quickly," recalls engineer, John Urosek.

Asking God "for any help he could give us", they all pointed to the same place on the map.

In a rescue as much about faith as physics, a team on the surface used a GPS satellite system to find the position corresponding to the highest point in the mine. Fortune smiled on them, for the point the rescuers located lay in a field between a farmer's pond, a main highway and a cemetery. A few yards either side and the trapped men would have been history.

As the drill pounded down to them, the trapped miners were breathing hard, sucking in bad air in the tiny space that held them. With the water still rising, they were literally down to their last breaths when the six-inch exploratory drill suddenly punched through, showering them with rock and earth.

With the drill came compressed air, the men drawing it deep into their oxygen-starved lungs. Using their one remaining hammer, they banged nine times on the pipe to let the rescuers know they were alive.

Yet the euphoria on the surface was shortlived. The officials knew that water was pouring in from the abandoned mine at a rate of 200,000 gallons a minute - equivalent to 200 fire engines pumping flat out - and the best guess was that they had an hour before the water swallowed the miners. As federal safety inspector Kevin Stricklin admitted: "You just felt so helpless. It was inevitable that these guys were going to drown if we didn't come up with something." The decision was taken to keep pumping compressed air into the shaft, in an attempt to create a bubble of air that would prevent the water rising further.

While there was considerable scepticism - what worked in the classroom might not work underground - in reality it was their only hope. Even so, the water continued to rise inexorably, so that by around noon on Thursday the miners were confined to an area the size of a large room with a roof height of barely five feet. They had nowhere left to go. "Death was staring us in the face and it was coming to get me," says miner Ron Hileman.

With the flood slowly advancing, the men thought of their wives and families.

They wrote final notes to their loved ones, which they sealed in an airtight lunch pail and lashed to a rock. One of the younger men, Blaine Mayhugh, wondered out loud what was the best way to drown. This was, he thought, no way to die - cold, wet and hunched over in the dark waiting for the end. Blaine's father-in-law, Tom Foy, grabbed a thin cable, lashed it round himself and looped it through the belts of some of the other men so that their bodies would not be scattered through the mine. If they were going to die, he said, they should at least die together, brothers to the last. They recited the Lord's Prayer and settled down to wait in the darkness, imagining the shudder of fear when the advancing water first brushed their boots, then slowly rose up their legs and bodies.

While it had been hours since the last contact with the trapped miners, above them rescuers frantically raced to prepare the site for a superdrill. It was to bore a 30-inch diameter hole to the trapped men and allow a hitherto untried rescue capsule to be lowered to them, but the drill broke halfway down and waiting families feared the worst. Several women, including Leslie Mayhugh, whose husband and father were both trapped, started planning their funeral services.

Unknown to them, however, the water that had threatened to engulf the men was slowly beginning to recede, thanks in part to powerful diesel pumps stationed at the mine. Yet it took another two days of nail-biting anxiety before finally, on July 28th, a new drill powered through the limestone and shale to the trapped men.

The miners were in remarkable spirits: "What took you guys so long?" one inquired laconically, a phrase that somehow symbolised the gritty brotherhood and rugged humour of a dying breed of men.

Back safely on the surface, they were reborn and recast, hailed as heroes, their selfless spirit, seen as representing America's heartland, a counterpoint to the "me first" ethic of corporate America. Now they are on a celebrity rollercoaster ride. For men used to working underground, the glare of publicity is both incomprehensible and intimidating as America, a land craving heroes, wills them to take more than their allotted 15-minutes of fame.

While recovering from the trauma of their brush with death - many are on medication to help them sleep - the men are cursed by celebrity. They sign autographs, strangers burst into tears in their presence, others push money into their hands or just shake them heartily. It is bewildering. "I just want to go fishing with my kids," says one miner. With a Disney TV movie, The Pennsylvania Miners' Story, about the rescue due out in late November - the men were paid $150,000 each for their story - and photo shoots with Annie Liebovitz for Vanity Fair plus spots on Oprah and other morning TV shows as part of the contract, they are in the limelight for the duration.

Locals complain that the behaviour of the Disney executives is high-handed and fear that the film will caricature what was for many "a perfect moment".

Moreover, there are fears that attempts by the nine rescued miners - and their lawyers - to find someone to sue over the accident will hamper any chance of the mine reopening. Miners who worked to free the men worry that the nine could lose them their jobs. Hate mail, with local postmarks, has arrived in the letterboxes of the rescued nine. "Get over this. Get on with your life," is one typical comment. The stigma of celebrity and the values of an unassuming local community do not sit well.

Even when the Disney movie is forgotten and the miners are back hunting in the woods of Somerset county with their buddies, life for them will never be the same. They have become emblems of the kind of America the nation would like to believe in - accidental heroes in a land yearning for the pioneering spirit that made it great.

Nine For Nine, The Pennsylvania Mine Rescue Miracle by Andrew Morton is published by Michael O'Mara Books (£9.99)