MINE SHAFT.(Hollywood portrayal of nine rescued Quecreek miners)(Brief Article)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 19-AUG-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In a season of dolor--when the news is mostly of economic ruin, climatic foreboding, the abduction of children, and, of course, terrorism, war, and rumors of war--the rescue of the Quecreek Nine was an interlude of gladness. Nine coal miners trapped deep beneath a cow pasture in southwestern Pennsylvania, the equivalent of twenty-four stories straight down; the miners scratching and crawling their way through pitch-black, four-foot-high tunnels fast filling with icy floodwater to find one another and a pocket of stale air; the rescue team aboveground, improvising a plan to pump in compressed air to push the water back, snapping a drill bit, almost losing hope; the miners, preparing for imminent death, sealing notes to their loved ones in a watertight bucket; time and air running out; and then, finally, as midnight approached on the fourth night, a breakthrough, joy and weeping, the miners lifted out one by one, all nine of them, haggard but whole.

It's a fine, uplifting story, full of terror and suspense, grit...

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