Newspaper Page Text
One came back
Trapped miner tells of his rescue
Editors Note: After the agonizing hours waiting to tell
rescuers that he was alive, trapped coal miner Ronald Ad
ley had to wait again. It would take rescue crews 88 hours
to chisel an escape tunnel through 50 feet of coal. In this
last of three articles, Adler tells of his rescue from the
black hole where he was imprisoned for six days.
By RONALD ADLEY
As Told To LEE LINDER
Associated Press Writer
Copyright (c) The Associated
Press 1977
TOWER CITY, Pa. (AP) — ‘lt’s Ronnie Adley. It’s
Ronnie Adley.’
I must have yelled it about six times before I heard the
voice of my foreman, Palmer Mervine.
‘Ronnie, are your all right?’
‘Get me out of here.’
‘lt’s good to hear your voice, Ronnie.”
Palmer’s voice was the first human being I heard since
the water gushed through the mine and left me trapped in
darkness. It seemed like a lifetime but it was only a little
more than a day.
It took about three hours after I heard the tapping to cut
the first tiny hole through the 50 feet of coal above me.
I barely saw a pinpoint of light and it was even harder to
hear anything clear.
I shouted back to Palmer to tell my wife I was okay.
I knew it was going to take some time. They told me to
relax, to sit still, and they’d get food and water.
Right off I told them about my buddies who were dead
below me, Ralph Renninger and Donald Shoffler. They
asked me if I heard anybody else, any other tapping.
‘No. Nothing.’
And I had no idea where the five other missing men
might be.
They punched a second hole pretty quick, angling down
from the other side of the pillar of coal that separated us.
A couple of plastic tubes were pushed through and some
orange juice was poured through. It tasted great.
Then they started drilling and drilling and drilling.
Trying to get a hole big enough to pass me some food. It
was the longest time. I went into the mine Tuesday
morning. It was now Thursday morning and the hole was
finished.
Now I could talk better to them.
First they passed through a rope, and hooked on a
miners lamp connected to batteries on the other end. It
felt good to see things again. The rope became a conveyer,
carrying plastic bags of water, of coffee, of soup.
After I ate I felt even better.
I asked for a chewing tobacco, and got it. It tasted really
good, made my mouth moist.
I asked for a shot of whisky.
‘We can’t give you that in the mine, Ronnie.’
‘I know that, I’m just kidding.’
They sent me blankets. And I got long underwear, a dry
shirt and pants, a cap, and gloves. I changed my clothes.
They started drilling lots of holes. The plan was to drill
enough holes and then break open a tunnel, about 20 in
ches wide. It would be wide enough for me to squeeze
through. I couldn’t wait.
I’d ask each shift that came on what time it was, and
what day it was, because my watch had stopped. And
every day that passed the waiting got tougher.
It seems that the closer they got the further away they
felt.
I wouldn’t talk to them very much because they told
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me: ‘We can stand and blab all night and it’s not going to
get you out.’
But it felt good that I could talk to somebody.
I knew it was going to take a while, them cutting just
inches every hour. They couldn’t fire any dynamite at all.
They couldn’t chance shaking anything. They didn’t want
to loose anything that might fall on me or them.
I was worried about another collapse as they drilled
toward me.
So I just lay back on the blanket thinking of my wife and
my kids, to keep my mind away from the mine. It was an
experience I hope no one ever had to go through.
I wiped everything out of my mind about my two bud
dies, down there, dead. I didn’t want to lose any sense of
balance, or crack up. This could happen to anybody.
I kept exercising. I felt my knees hurting and my shoul
ders, and all my joints. I knew what was happening. I was
getting a cold. And I also knew if I would just set there I
could possibly catch pneumonia. So I would move my
arms around, my legs. I would move my neck, my back,
all my moving parts.
Then on Saturday night, they finally punched through
the escape tunnel but it had to be widened.
‘Give yourself a break and let me use that hammer for a
while,* I told the guy with the air drill.
So they passed it in and I was cutting that coal.
Boy, it felt good to cut my own way out. I cut for the
longest time and then they said they were going to try to
pull me out.
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I tried but my shoulders couldn’t make it. There wasn’t
enough room. The hole was head high and I had to pull
myself up and into it.
So I got down again and they started drilling again and I
started ripping all the stuff loose at my end, pulling at the
coal with my bare hands.
It took about another 8 to 10 hours to widen the hole. And
when I squeezed through to the other side, to freedom, it
felt so great — just like being bom again.
‘Do you want to be carried out on a stretcher?’
‘Hell no, I want to walk out of here.’
And I did, right to the mine cars that had carried me
into the mine six days earlier. Riding out took just four
minutes.
The ambulance people asked me if I wanted to lay down,
and I said, ‘No.’ We pulled alongside the highway, not far
from the mine, and my wife got out of a police car and got
into the ambulance.
I hugged her. I kissed her. I was making her all dirty.
But she didn’t care how black she was getting. She just felt
good inside.
Now I’m home. My 8-year old son asks me how it was
down there. I try to explain it to him but he’s too young to
understand.
Will I go back into the mine? I couldn’t tell you. Right
now, I’m a little afraid of it. I don’t know if I can ever go
back into the mines again.
— Griffin Daily News Friday, March 18,1977
Page 5
Rescued coal miner Ronald Adley gives his wife Anna
Mae a big hug during an interview in his Tower City, Pa.
home. Adley was rescued after being trapped five days in
the Kocher Coal Company mine. Five miners are still
trapped in mine while four others were found dead. (AP)