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CNN Live Sunday

Nine Miners Rescued After Being Trapped for 77 Hours

Aired July 28, 2002 - 17:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: Their ordeal captured the attention of a nation. After nearly 80 hours, with their lives hanging in the balance, nine Pennsylvania miners are recovering today. CNN's Brian Palmer is standing by in Somerset, Pennsylvania and he has the latest. Brian.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Renay. It's a glorious day here in Somerset County. We want to give you the latest update on the miners. We've heard that three of the miners, actually all of the miners at Somerset Hospital have been released. Three of the miners who are at Memorial Hospital in Johnstown have also been released.

One of the three who remains in Memorial Hospital has been treated in one of those hyperbaric chambers that we've heard about, apparently with some decompression sickness like symptoms, but he is actually out of that chamber and we're waiting to hear what the condition of those three remaining miners is.

But we'd like to tell you what we know about these nine men. We're going to put something up on the screen so you can get a sense of who they are. We're trying to learn as much as we can about these folks.

The first person actually pulled out was Randy Fogle, 43, married with three children; and, as you see right here he was the first miner rescued and caused just a, what's the word, a barrage of applause.

Harry Blaine Mayhugh was actually down there with his father-in- law. He's 31 and he spoke earlier today with his wife at sort of an impromptu press availability, if you will.

The next miner who was pulled out, we're coming to Thomas Foy who is the father-in-law we just spoke about, 51, one of the oldest miners there, and also the leader of the crew. Blaine Mayhugh spoke at great length about the conditions underground and how they actually had to - the miners tied themselves together and huddled together to keep warm and how some of the older men, including Mr. Foy, kept their spirits up.

The next out was John Unger, who apparently raises cattle on the family farm when he isn't working in the mine. So, mining as you know is one of the most dangerous professions, so perhaps he raises the cattle as sort of a more relaxing sideline. Now the next from Gray, Pennsylvania, John Phillippi, married with a child, and here you see it says his young son idolizes everything his father does. He's got a lot more to idolize now. That is for sure.

Then the next person from Gray, Pennsylvania as well, Ronald Hileman, he's married. We don't have much more information about him. One of the reason we don't have a tremendous amount of information about these people is because the state and local authorities formed a protective bubble around these folks.

The next person up, Dennis Hall, again 49 years old, on the older side of the miners trapped down there. We're learning what we know now, now that the names are being revealed.

The next person who was pulled out, Robert Pugh, he was taken to Conemaugh Hospital, age 50, from Boswell, Pennsylvania. And the last person to have the honor to be pulled out of the hole was Mark Popernack, age 41, from Somerset, Pennsylvania. He was also taken to Somerset, so he is presumable one of the people who was released from the hospital earlier today.

So that's pretty much what we know now. The condition of these folks we are again trying to learn, and as I was saying, during this whole ordeal, the state and local authorities really tried to keep the families and keep the press sort of separate.

Some of the local folks, you'll be hearing from one of the reporters who covered this story with great acidulousness. They were able to use some of their contacts to talk to some family members and some friends, but there was this distance kept between the press and the families so that the families could have some privacy. Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes, I know Brian that they really wanted to have the media respect the families' privacy and to keep that bubble around them, but we will be talking later with a local reporter there with a local newspaper and see what kind of light she can shed on who these gentlemen were. Brian Palmer reporting in Somerset, thanks for joining us.

While the miners were trapped in that underground cell, they were unaware of what was going on above them. For days, their thoughts alternated between moments of courage and moments of despair. Here now, one of the rescued miners tells of their struggle in his own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLAINE MAYHUGH: It was Thursday around 12:00 Noon and the water started rising and we was running out of room, so I asked the boss if he had a pen and he knew what for. I said, "well I want to write my wife and kids, you know to tell them I love them and you know."

So, and then my father-in-law he tied us all together so we wouldn't float away from each other, and then the boss said, "well we got one more try." He said, "number one entry is higher, so everybody let's go there and give that a shot, you know." And then we got there and water seemed like it stopped and then for about a day and a half it stayed at that level and then we didn't know what to think.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Were you aware of efforts to rescue you?

MAYHUGH: We heard the big drill on and off but we thought maybe they couldn't find us or maybe they broke down or we didn't know what to think. You had your high points and low points every day. I mean like OK it sounds good and then one time the drill, I think we timed it. It was like 16 hours we had never heard it run again. So we thought well maybe they gave up on us or something major happened you know. We had no idea what to think.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MAYHUGH: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). God, between God and my wife and kids, that's the only thing that got me through.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Did you have any sort of prayers down there?

MAYHUGH: Yes. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: You all started tapping on the drill when it came down? How did that work?

MAYHUGH: When they first gave us the air shaft, the six-inch air shaft, we hit on that right away and we got a response. But then maybe an hour later and the water came up too high and we had to get back out of there, so then we proceeded on getting on the roof back where we was, hoping they'd locate us over there which we never got - you're supposed to get shot blasts from up above which we never heard.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MAYHUGH: Well, we was on dry actually. We had maybe a 50 feet by 20 feet compartment that was relatively dry. I'm not going to say dry, but the bottom was moist.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MAYHUGH: Snuggled with each other, laying up against each other, sitting back to back to each other, anything to produce body heat, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MAYHUGH: Anything imaginable, about the family, the last thing you said to your family, you know, before you left for work that day, you know, and the only day in my life I never kissed my wife before I went to work. That had to be the day, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MAYHUGH: Everybody. Everybody had strong moments. At any certain time, maybe one guy got down and then the rest pulled together and then that guy would get back up and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That's the only way it could have been.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAN MIGUEL: Miner Blaine Mayhugh, we will hear more of his story in the next hour. The rescue effort was an emotional roller coaster ride for just about everyone involved. Christine Slavik is with the Somerset Daily American, the local newspaper there. She's been speaking with the miners' families and joins us from Somerset, Pennsylvania. Ms. Slavik, thank you for being with us today.

CHRISTINE SLAVIK, SOMERSET DAILY AMERICAN: Thank you, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: I understand that you had a chance to interview Blaine Mayhugh's wife. How did that go and how is she feeling right now?

SLAVIK: This morning she was very distraught. She just got her husband back so after thinking she lost him, so it was emotional for her. It was emotional for everybody.

SAN MIGUEL: You've been talking to the family members since you started covering this story on Wednesday night, and I know that I mean at times it must have seemed like you know things were going to be very, very, very difficult to get those guys out of there. Did any of them at any time lose any hope? Did they share with you the moods as they changed over those three days?

SLAVIK: Actually the only family member that I interviewed was Leslie, and at one point she did say she lost hope whenever they said there were 50 million gallons of water in the mine, but she regained the hope whenever she heard the tapping, whenever the rescuers told her that tapping was heard.

SAN MIGUEL: You know, we've had, you know, cameras there since this thing started but we've had to keep our distance, but you've been able to kind of mingle and talk to everybody that was involved in the rescue effort. What did you see behind the scenes that we haven't seen yet? What were some of the developments that went on to insure that this rescue was going to be a success?

SLAVIK: Everybody had their heart into it, everybody from the national press to the local press to the rescuers, the families, everybody, even the community had their heart into it.

SAN MIGUEL: And let's talk a little bit about the community. I mean the governor came out and said that he wanted to make it clear that the media should respect the privacy of the families involved here throughout this entire ordeal, but it is, you know, mining communities tend to be very close knit. Is that what is going on in Somerset right now and give us some idea of how the entire community kind of banded together?

SLAVIK: That's pretty much most of Pennsylvania. Most of Pennsylvania is a coal-mining community and that's the way every town, every small town. Somerset County is mostly coal mining, so everybody's going to bond together. It happened during September 11, everybody bonded together. It happened again now.

SAN MIGUEL: I understand yes, that was very close to the area or in the area where Flight 93 went down and that some of the family members of those who died on Flight 93 had sent an e-mail to the families of the miners saying basically "hang in there. We are with you." How important was that for this community spirit that was being shown there?

SLAVIK: Actually, that's the first time I heard about that.

SAN MIGUEL: Is that right?

SLAVIK: I've been pretty much running around. Yes.

SAN MIGUEL: I'm sorry. I apologize if I caught you off guard with that and I know that you have a job to do. You've had a job to do for the last four days there, so we just wanted to kind of pick your brain to get your thoughts on what you've seen around there.

When you were there when the governor came out and said all nine are alive and they seem to be in reasonably good shape, what was going on in the crowd there when that went on and with the family members that you were able to talk to or see at that time?

SLAVIK: Actually, as far as I know none of the family members were here, and I was on my way here, so I know, I heard on the radio a huge sigh of relief, cheering, and everybody was happy that they got the miners out safe and I'm sure the families were ecstatic.

SAN MIGUEL: As we are seeing right now. Christine Slavik, who is a reporter for the Somerset Daily American, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and your observations with us. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

SLAVIK: Oh, you're welcome.

SAN MIGUEL: Well, President Bush says he is thrilled the miners are safe. He says the Quecreek Mine rescue is a wonderful example of federal, state, and local officials working together. David Laurisky, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Pennsylvania, joins us by phone with more on what is ahead for the mine. Mr. Laurisky, I know you've had a very busy last three or four days, but we thank you for being with us today.

DAVID LAURISKI, PA ASST. SECY. OF LABOR: My pleasure, good afternoon.

SAN MIGUEL: Good afternoon to you. I think I know the answer to this question but let me go ahead and ask you your reaction when you heard that those miners not only alive but they were in reasonably good shape.

LAURISKI: Well, certainly a great sense of elation, but also a sense to know that we had to keep our wits about us and I know that we had a lot of work yet ahead of us to get them on the surface. But, it was quite an experience, I think, for everybody, and as much as we wanted to let everyone rejoice and holler up and down, we really needed to keep our calm so we could keep our focus and complete the work and the task that we were there to do.

SAN MIGUEL: Now that they are out and they are receiving medical treatment and they are saying that they want to get back to their normal lives as quickly as possible, what now for the mine itself? What kind of investigation is going to be going on and what do you want to see happen with that?

LAURISKI: Well, we're currently pulling together a team of investigators, experienced investigators, who will probably begin the investigation early in the early part of this week and so we'll be doing some of that at the mine site. We'll conduct interviews. We'll look at records.

As the mine is pumped free of water, we'll look at parts of the mine and hopefully get a chance to see where the actual accident occurred and our focus will be to look at the facts, to find the facts, to understand what happened here to determine the root cause of this accident so that we can come up with ideas and ways to prevent a recurrence of this in the future. So, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

SAN MIGUEL: I know. Exactly and that work is just getting started, but I wanted to ask you to comment on what's been reported that these men inadvertently broke into an abandoned water-filled mine that maps had showed to be 300 feet away. Obviously, it was much closer and that's how we got into this situation.

Is there an issue with abandoned mines, maybe not just in Pennsylvania but in this country and how they are marked? I mean is there an issue do you think that needs to be investigated here?

LAURISKI: Well, we're certainly going to take a look at that. I mean I think we understand that all over the country and particularly here in Appalachia that there are a lot of old mine workings and a lot of old mines that have been sitting for many, many years such as this one, and I think the last time it operated was in 1957, at least that's what we can determine at this point.

So, we have a lot of work to do to understand the best we can what we can look at that will find ways to prevent this from occurring again, to see if our system is adequate to help prevent this, because we have standards in place that are supposed to be followed when you approach old mines or you approach old mine workings. We need to understand if they came into play here.

So there's a lot of issues we've got to look at, and until we can actually assemble those facts, I really you know wouldn't want to speculate one way or another what the situation may or may not have been.

SAN MIGUEL: Are there any lessons to be learned here regarding the technology that was used to rescue these miners or the technology that's in place right now in mines that maybe would have made the job a little bit easier, such as wireless communications between the miners and the surface? Is there anything that you'd want to shed, that you'd want to know more about?

LAURISKI: Well yes, we're going to sit down in the coming days and we're going to critique all of the activities that went on here but you know there certainly is a lot of other technology that's out there and you know we can take a look at that. But certainly we want to critique the events as they have occurred, and we want to understand the good things that we did and we want to find out where we could maybe make improvements.

But I think overall, this was very successful. There were some unique things and we have a ventilation engineer that's in our Pittsburgh, or actually our Bruceton, Pennsylvania lab who is the fellow that was able to devise this air lock. I mean and he had seen this in effect one other time and I think that's really a credit to this man who I've known for many years and have a great deal of respect for.

So that was key to the success of this operation, that and the fact that these miners kept their wits and they got into a place and they stayed together and those were the two keys that made this successful.

SAN MIGUEL: It seems like truly a team effort involving a lot of different agencies. David Lauriski, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Pennsylvania, thank you so much for your time.

While a few of the miners head home from the hospital today, others are not ready to leave just yet. Coming up next, CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be here to explain the health problems that some of these miners may be facing. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: The miners say their survival was indeed a group effort. One of the miners was treated in a decompression chamber. Another is being treated for irregularities with his heartbeat. They all suffered from dehydration and hunger. CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now with more on their physical condition. I understand the latest is that six of them are out of the hospital.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, remarkable. Nine of them all got out alive, six of them are out, three still in the hospital, Renay, as you mentioned.

A couple of them are having problems with the heart, one a fast heartbeat, an irregular heartbeat, often known as an arrhythmia where the heart actually is not beating in a very coordinated fashion. Thankfully, something that's often pretty easy to take care of either with medicines or just replacing some of the fluids that was no doubt lost over 77 hours being down there. Another gentleman we mentioned earlier was in a decompression chamber. There's a lot of differences in the pressure down that low, 240 feet below, versus at the ground level and certainly that gentleman had some troubles with recompressing himself as he got back up, needed to be put in a decompression chamber. Renay, he is out of the decompression chamber as well now, so he's actually just in the hospital but appears to be recovering well.

SAN MIGUEL: How long did he stay in there? I mean I guess how long is the minimum to recompress, and what was going on inside his body as he was in there?

GUPTA: Right, it's sort of fascinating. He was in there about four and a half, five hours, from what I understand and what happens basically with miners, they actually have to compress the mines because that extracts all the water out of the coal. I just learned about this stuff.

When you compress like that, the body is under a fair amount of pressure, so when the body is under pressure like that, when you come back up to a relatively normal pressure, sometimes the body doesn't calibrate very well to that. It has to be done rather slowly, and certainly these gentlemen were down there much longer than they expected being down there, so not entirely surprising really that there were some compression problems just with the one gentleman, though, as it turns out.

SAN MIGUEL: OK, now we have dehydration and hunger to deal with and then another gentleman has the heart arrhythmia. Is that, the heart issue, can that be treated with medication or just watchful waiting? How would you deal with that?

GUPTA: Well, the most likely scenario with the heart problem may just be a fact that he was dehydrated. Seventy-seven hours without any fluids, I understand, they didn't have any water with them down there. Seventy-seven hours is a long time to go without any fluid, and certainly a body needs fluid just to keep the blood and the blood vessels pumping, and certainly without that, the heart can have some troubles. It starts to speed up in rate first and then they go into an abnormal rhythm.

Oftentimes though, Renay, to answer your question, it can just be treated with fluids alone. Sometimes it may require medications. In sort of rare circumstances, sometimes they'll actually shock the heart back into a regular beat, but there are a lot of good ways and very successful ways to treat that.

SAN MIGUEL: One other thing here involves the psychological fact, the stress that they were under while they were down in there in complete darkness, and we talked about this all this week. You don't know darkness until you've been in a mine.

GUPTA: Yes.

SAN MIGUEL: And then with the water, you know the levels going up and down to dangerous levels here, I mean how, you know, what's ahead for them as far as any kind of stress-related issues that they may face?

GUPTA: Well, I think that's a very important point and certainly everyone is sort of focused on the success, which they should be at this point, but a very harrowing experience. Sixty million gallons of water really rushing at them and gasping for air quite literally, it wouldn't be uncommon to have some sort of post traumatic stress problems from this, just reminders of the sort of experience. Remembering that could bring back a whole host of psychological symptoms.

I'm sure that that's something that's going to be addressed along with their medical care in the hospital, and probably psychologically for some time after. But, Renay, that's a good point because I think that despite all the success, and thankfully everyone got out well and it looks like they're all going to do well. The psychological impact may be something they have to contend with later on down the road.

SAN MIGUEL: The good thing is that they have some family members who are very glad to see them and they will definitely help them deal with those psychological issues.

GUPTA: That's right and 200 people that spent hours getting them out of there.

SAN MIGUEL: The best medicine may have been that applause when they were coming out. Dr. Sanjay Gupta our Medical Correspondent, thanks for being with us.

GUPTA: Good seeing you.

SAN MIGUEL: We will have more detailed reporting on the rescue at Quecreek Mine coming up this evening. CNN will air a special "ALIVE: RESCUE AT QUECREEK" tonight at 10 o'clock Eastern, seven o'clock Pacific.

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