Miracles do happen. The rescue of nine miners trapped in Pennsylvania’s flooded Quecreek mine near Somerset, Pennsylvania, last July proves that with a lot of determination, persistence, skill, and reliable machinery, anything is possible.

The ordeal for nine miners trapped more than 200 feet below the surface began the evening of Wednesday, July 24, when the group accidentally broke through a rock wall and released a flood of water from an adjacent, abandoned mine in the working shaft. Although all nine men were found alive late in the evening on Saturday, July 27, and returned to the earth’s surface early the next morning, the tense 78-hour operation to rescue the miners was not without incident.

As the trapped miners began tapping to signal rescuers to their whereabouts, the rescue attempt began. A setback, however, occurred as quickly as rescue efforts got underway when a non-IR downhole bit broke. But help was on the way.

Within hours of the accident, IR’s distributor in Somerset (Keystone Drill Services) contacted Rudy Lyon, marketing and engineering manager of IR Drilling Solutions’ consumables business, for an Ingersoll-Rand 30-inch Quantum Leap downhole drill, model QL200S. On Friday, July 26, the distributor also requested two model QL200 hammer drills to bore holes that would be used to pump water from the flooded mine. The 30-inch drill was enroute from IR’s Roanoke, Virginia, facility to the mine when the non-IR downhole bit failure occurred.

IR drill rigs were also involved in the rescue. "The RD20 was used to drill the rescue hole and used to extract the miners," said Ron Buell, marketing manager of IR Drilling Solutions in Garland, Texas. "In addition, an IR RD10 drill rig was used to drill the secondary rescue hole, and several other IR drills were used to drill de-watering holes to reduce the water level in the mine."