All nine of the miners
who had been trapped in a flooded Pennsylvania pit in cramped and extremely cold conditions have been rescued.
The last miner was pulled up from the mine shaft shortly before 7 a.m. (Irish time)after a three-day ordeal that many observers had feared would end tragically. The miners had spent some 75 hours in a four-foot-high chamber filled with chilly water.
Two miners, one suffering from minor chest pains and another with an injured shoulder, were flown by medical helicopter to a trauma centre in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Others travelled by ambulance to local hospitals in Somerset.
At the hospitals, the miners were to be reunited with their families and undergo 24 hours of medical evaluation.
The rescue effort involved hoisting each man to the surface in a capsule individually, then rushing him to a US Navy decompression chamber to forestall the possibility that the compressed air being pumped into the shaft could give them "diver's bends" if they were brought to the surface too quickly.
Although there had been no signs of life from the trapped miners since they made tapping noises mid-day Thursday, officials remained hopeful, refusing to characterize their efforts as anything other than a rescue mission.
"A lot of people from a lot of places have been working night and day for this result," remarked state Environmental Secretary Mr David Hess, who said rescuers had been bolstered by messages of support emailed from people around the world.
The miners appeared to be alert but some were suffering from hypothermia, with body temperatures 2-3 degrees Celsius below normal after 72 hours in air and water temperatures as low as 10 degrees.
Rescuers found all nine alive and in relatively good condition after growing fears about their welfare as delays plagued rescue efforts and 21/2 days passed with no definitive sign of life from below the surface.
Emergency crews reached the flooded shaft shortly after 3 a.m. (Irish time) and learned that the nine were all alive soon after lowering a telephone line.
Mr Mark Popernack, 41, the last miner to be hauled to the surface in the yellow tube-shaped rescue cage, emerged smiling and showing the thumbs-up sign 77 hours after the accident as about 150 onlookers burst into celebratory cheers and applause.
Once rescuers managed to reach the underground chamber, they used the operation's rescue cage to lower provisions including food, water, blankets and lamps.
The miners had been excavating bituminous coal near the entrance of the Que Creek mine late on Wednesday, when they inadvertently broke through into a flooded adjacent shaft which had been abandoned in the 1950s.
AFP &