Trapped Miners Survive

Some of us probably don’t remember but five years ago next month (July 2002) nine miners were trapped in a coal mine in Pennsylvania. On a Wednesday evening the mine collapsed filling with water. The miners were not pulled from the mine until Sunday morning. The miners were 250 feet underground in a water-filled mine shaft. Together they "decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group." They knew that they couldn’t last long. The water temperature was 55 degrees. If they were not rescued in a matter of hours they would all die of hypothermia.

So what the men decided to do was work together. "When one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned."

Harry Mayhugh when he was pulled from the mine said, "Everybody had strong moments. But 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."
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Source: Sermon Central, June, 2007.