Miracle in the Mine

By the sixth day after the bump, Springhill had just about given up hope for 69 men still underground in North America's deepest mine. Exhausted rescuers still hacked through rubble at a painful 1 ft. per hour, but the women stopped coming to the pithead. Some families bought cemetery plots for their men. The newsmen left for other stories, and the coal-grimed town nursed its grief behind closed doors, wondering dully what it would do now that DOSCO (Dominion Steel & Coal Corp., Ltd., subsidiary of A. V. Roe Canada Ltd.) planned to close Springhill's last mine and major industry.

At 2 p.m. came the wondrous news. A rescuer at the 13,000-ft. level heard a faint call from the broken end of a compressed-air pipe sticking from the rubble. He yelled back, heard an answering croak: "There are twelve of us in here. Come and get us.'' That they did. Swiftly, yet with infinite care, the rescuers dug toward the entombed men, both sides shouting happy obscenities. A burr-tongued Scotsman yelled through the pipe, got the reply: "Take the marbles out of your mouth and talk English." The rescue team shoved a copper tube through the steel pipe, poured in water, hot coffee, then soup, while a mine doctor shouted instructions to take one swallow, count 500, take another.

At the pithead, a reporter shouted the news to a local man climbing out of his car. He stared blankly, sobbed "Oh my God" and sped off to town. Within minutes, doors slammed, feet echoed swiftly on the pavement, and once more Springhill raced to the pithead and waited.

Thirteen hours later, borne on stretchers, swathed in blankets, their eyes shielded to prevent permanent damage from glaring camera lights, the twelve began to emerge from their 4-ft.-high culdesac. Doctors found the men an average 10 Ibs. lighter but in surprisingly good shape. They had found enough food in their own lunch pails and in those of dead companions in the chamber for four days, enough water, when rationed from a tiny aspirin bottle, to last almost as long. Said one survivor proudly: "No man took more than his share." Toward the last they gathered their own urine in tin cups, sipped it and used it to moisten their lips in the miner's standard survival procedure. Next evening Prince Philip, returning home from a visit to Canada, stopped at Springhill's hospital, and went from bed to bed with words of encouragement.

Hope for the remaining 48 miners still missing rose briefly, then ebbed as the DOSCO rescue director announced that there was really no chance. The digging went on. At 4:45 a.m. on the ninth day, a miner 12,600 ft. from the pithead heard scratchings. "It sounded like a cat," he said. "I couldn't believe my ears." Again there was a frantic scrambling through 12 ft. of loose debris, and two hours, 40 minutes later seven more survivors began to come out. At week's end, 29 were still missing.

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