Approximately 10:30 Wednesday night, nine Pennsylvania coal miners got caught in a cave-in at the Que Creek mine in Somerset County (60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh) after they accidentally drilled into an adjacent mine and released millions of gallons of water into their own shaft. An estimated 50 to 60 million gallons of water as cold as 50 degrees Fahrenheit rushed into the mine from the abandoned shaft, trapping the men in a chamber 300-feet underground. Rescue crews, who are currently trying to locate a path through the mine's flooded entrance 1.5 miles away from the trapped men, said that they have been able to slow the water's rise by pumping water out of the mine through smaller bore holes. Furthermore, rescuers have said that the miners have been communicating with them through taps on a pipe casing; however, they have not heard any distinct taps since 11:30 Thursday morning (13 hours after the cave-in). State officials suggests that later signals from the miners may have been obscured by increasing rescue activity at the site.

For more information surrounding this story, users may access the first three news links listed above. The fourth link provides a list of 15 mining incidents that have occurred in the state of Pennsylvania since 1995, provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Finally, the last two links are home pages of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety, respectively.