Associated Press file photo / The fourth of the 9 trapped miners at the Quecreek Mine is helped out of the rescue capsule in Somerset, Pa., early Sunday July 28, 2002.

Associated Press file photo / The fourth of the 9 trapped miners at the Quecreek Mine is helped out of the rescue capsule in Somerset, Pa., early Sunday July 28, 2002.

SOMERSET — Before Our Coal Miners’ Cafe was named to commemorate the miracle that was the Quecreek mine rescue, it was simply called the Family Diner, said cafe owner Betty Rhoads.

Fifteen years ago, all of the cafe’s regular coffee drinkers were coal miners or came from coal mining families. So every familiar face at the cafe was affected, first by the terror of the mining accident, and later by the miracle of rescuing all nine miners 78 hours later.

“Everybody who lived through that here in town never forgot any of it. It is embedded in us,” Rhoads said Friday at the cafe.

Saturday will be the 15th anniversary of the rescue, and a community celebration day will be held from 3 to 10 p.m at the rescue site on Dormel Farms at 140 Haupt Road.

The rescue site on the dairy farm sits about three-quarters of a mile from the entrance of the still-active mine. But the mine now has safety improvements, including a survival room supplied with enough oxygen and food to last 36 miners for three days, said volunteers with the Quecreek Mine Foundation.

The acre of the farm encompassing the rescue site now houses an education center and is a state historical site maintained by the nonprofit foundation.

A foundation volunteer riveted a crowd of 30 visitors Friday with the story of the miners’ experiences below ground and the rescue effort that unfolded above.

Carol Love of Greensburg said she made 300 visits to the site during the years and has brought busloads of people to hear the hourlong presentation.

“I’ve heard it hundreds of times,” she said. “I’m still moved by it. It’s just remarkable.”

Mine shafts flooded

On July 24, 18 coal miners at the Quecreek Mine accidentally dug into the abandoned, poorly documented No. 2 Saxman Mine, flooding the room and pillar mine with an estimated 50 million gallons of water.

About 9 p.m. that day, 18 miners found themselves in danger 240 feet underground, below the fields of Dormel Farm when the flooded Saxman Mine was breached as the mining progressed eastward.

Water had broken through the face and was inundating the entry. Nine of the miners used the mine’s phone system to tell the other group of nine to evacuate immediately. Those miners were able to escape about 9:45 p.m. and alert others, and a 911 call was made at 9:53 p.m.

But the mine was flooding too rapidly for the remaining miners to evacuate. Twice they tried to travel in the 4-foot-high tunnels over 3,000 feet to a shaft that would lead them to the surface, but these also were flooded.

On the surface, Pennsylvania State Police were guarding the Quecreek mine site by 10:30 p.m. and instructed reporters to go to the local church for a press conference scheduled to occur later that night. State Police Cpl. Robert Barnes Jr. telephoned families of the missing miners, asking them to come to the Sipesville fire station for more information. About 11 p.m., Barnes also asked United Methodist Pastor Barry Ritenour if he could spend the night at the fire station with the families.

In addition, calls were made to find a drill that could bore a hole big enough to raise men from a mine. One was located in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Meanwhile, to escape the force of the rushing water, the nine miners retreated deep into a slightly uphill area of the mine where oxygen ran dangerously low and water kept rising.

Rescue begins immediately

The rescue started with two men who explored the area above ground, using both GPS and traditional methods of tracking the mine.

They stopped at a cattle field on farmer Bill Arnold’s property, concluding that was their best guess at the miners’ location. Arnold broke the ground first with his backhoe because he knew there was an underground gas line in the area that

wasn’t on the maps.

A 6.5-inch-diameter borehole was begun at 2:05 a.m. The borehole was drilled to allow air to be pumped into the mineshaft where the miners were presumed to be. A four-member team started working about 3:15 a.m. Thursday, and its drill cracked through what turned out to be 240 feet of rock, and into the mine shaft 1 hour and 45 minutes later. On July 25, at 5:06 a.m., about 8 hours after the breakthrough, a 6.5-inch hole was drilled into the mine. The drilling rig’s air compressor pushed air into the mine, and the air returns from the borehole showed a marginal air quality of 19.3 percent oxygen. Rescue workers tapped on the inserted air pipe, and at 5:12 a.m. received three strong bangs in response, followed by nine taps at 11:40 a.m.

The drill nearly hit some of the miners when it came through the roof. Nine hammer taps on the drill bit signaled at least some of the miners were alive.

‘Super drill’ arrives

A “super drill,” capable of drilling a 30-inch hole, had been sent with police escort up from West Virginia. Once oxygen purging began, drillers had begun the 30-inch rescue hole at 6:45 p.m. July 25. It was drilled to a 105-foot depth by 1:12 a.m. July 26, when the drill bit broke. The distance from this point to the mine was estimated at 139 feet.

At 3:45 a.m., a portion of the bit was retrieved from the hole, but it was discovered that part of the bit had broken off and remained stuck in the hole. A special tool needed to be fabricated in order to assist in retrieving the bit. Normally, such a job would be done in three or four days, but a 95-member machine shop in Big Run, Jefferson County, was able to build the tool in three hours. A National Guard helicopter flew the tool in, and the bit was retrieved at 4:09 p.m. July 26.

One by one

At 12:30 a.m. July 28, the 8.5-foot high steel mesh escape capsule, with supplies, descended into the rescue hole, into the void where the men had languished in fear and hope for 77 hours. Due to recurring chest pains, foremen Randy Fogle, 43, was chosen to be the first rescued miner. He arrived on the surface about 1 a.m. The removal order of the rest of the crew was based upon weight, the heaviest to lightest, as the last would have no assistance getting into the capsule.

After Fogle was brought to the surface, Harry Mayhugh, 31, came up next; then Tom Foy, 51; John Unger, 52; John Phillippi, 36; Ronald Hile­man, 49; Dennis Hall, 49; Robert Pugh, 50; and finally, the ninth, Mark Popernack, 41. The miners were brought up in 15-minute intervals, and all nine miners were to the surface by 2:45 a.m.

Blough said he helped carry the miners one by one on a gurney to safety after a crane lifted each one from the successfully drilled rescue shaft in the late, dark hours of July 28.

“Everything is still fresh in my mind,” he said.

Crane operator Brad Hillegass of Schellsburg was called in to lift the miners to safety. He had been working in Somerset at the time.

“I still get asked about it a good bit. When I meet someone, friends introduce me as the guy who ran the crane,” he said.

The image of the Quecreek miners emerging in a little yellow basket is iconic. It took four hours to bring all of them up, Hillegass said. The yellow capsule was provided by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

“It was difficult because you couldn’t see anyone down there. And you had to go really slow. If you brought them up too fast, the fear was they would get decompression sickness,” he said. “It was neat to know you were bringing nine men out alive who you weren’t expecting to see. How do you think someone could survive three days without food and water?”

The only nourishment the miners had while trapped had come from the lunchbox packed by Dennis Hall’s wife that floated on the water to them.

Surreal scene

An estimated 700 rescuers, including water pump truck drivers, volunteers, Navy Seals, then-Gov. Mark Schweiker and officials from the federal Mine Safety And Health Administration had converged on Arnold’s property.

National news stations with reporters and cameras kept people nationwide glued to their seats at home.

“It was surreal, dreamlike. Days rapidly ran together,” Arnold said.

A certain determination for a miracle seemed to set in. It had been 10 months since a hijacked plane — Flight 93 — crashed in an open field in the same county.

“Everyone was thinking, ‘We can’t go through this again,'” Sipesville Volunteer Fire Company truck foreman Kevin Blough said Friday.

The camaraderie shown during the Quecreek rescue amazes him to this day.

“It brought everyone together. We talk about it, the older guys in the fire company. It was amazing to see people come together like that,” he said.

The moment when the drill bit broke in the process of finishing the rescue shaft is something that no one skips in retelling the story.

Glorious Sunday

The next morning, one of the miners, Popernack and his family went to the diner.

“All the people who came in for lunch after church were applauding and hugging him,” cafe owner Rhoads said.

“It was a glorious Sunday morning,” she said.

Arnold said hundreds including former Gov. Schweiker will visit the rescue site Thursday for an invitation-only 15th anniversary commemoration. Then, starting at 3 p.m. Saturday, hundreds more are expected to attend the public celebration, Arnold said.

“One of the main things is that the Quecreek mine rescue changed the paradigm of mine rescue,” he said.

“The commemoration is about looking back on the past 15 years, and where we’ve come with the coal mining industry,” he said. “Because of the rescue, hundreds and hundreds of changes have been made to make mining safer,” he said.

The changes include digitized mine maps, new rules about predrilling before miners go underground, tracking devices built into hard hats and survival room additions to mines, he said.

“The overarching message is of hope and what we can achieve under a merciful God when we pull together as Americans and pull together for the common good,” Arnold said.

When 33 Chilean miners were rescued in 2010, comments by Chilean officials were that if Quecreek had not been successful, they would not have even attempted to rescue them, Arnold said.

Arnold recalled being asked by a reporter during another mine disaster what he would tell the families of the trapped miners.

“I told the reporter that I would say ‘Cling to hope as much as you can, and if hope fails, then hang on to faith, because miracles do happen.'”