Jul 31, 2002 By Amy Karpinsky 7 min read

MOUNT MORRIS – After working for two solid days to drill a hole to reach the nine miners trapped 240 feet below in rural Somerset County without any sleep or a shower, a cranky Duane Yost took out his frustrations on Gov. Mark Schweiker. “I told him that all the hotel rooms (in Somerset) had been taken by the media and if I didn’t get a shower I was going to kick some butt,” Yost said. “He handed me a key to his room.”

Yost is the president of Gene D. Yost and Son Excavating and Drilling Inc. of Mount Morris, the company that was responsible for drilling the 240-foot hole from which the miners were pulled to safety after more than three days underground.

Additionally, Yost’s company provided a separate drill rig that bored four holes 300-feet down about a half-mile away that were used to pump a portion of the 50 to 60 million gallons of water from the mine.

Although the larger manhole that was used to free the miners got most of the media attention, without the other holes that provided outlets for the water, the rescue could not have been attempted.

At 2:45 a.m. Sunday, nearly 78 hours after inadvertently hitting into an abandoned coal mine and becoming trapped underground, the last of the nine men emerged from the hole amid cheers and tears from the rescue workers.

Yost and his crew of more than a dozen men were there when the miners were pulled out of the hole he worked to drill and saw – along with thousands via a live television feed – the men emerge one by one, covered in black coal dust and soaking wet.

“We were there till the end when the last guy came out,” Yost said. He said throughout the ordeal, which included a few setbacks, there were so many ifs that kept surfacing. He said officials didn’t know how high the water was, didn’t know exactly where the men were and didn’t know what condition they were in.

“You hope for the best, and that’s how it worked out,” Yost said.

Considering it was their first rescue mission, things couldn’t have turned out better. As of Tuesday, all but one of the miners had been released from the hospital. That man, Thomas Foy, 51, was listed in good condition.

Yost said as he watched the men pulled to safety he was worried about the crews needing a harness for 350-pound Randy Fogle.

“Then I found out he was the first one out,” Yost said.

Standing in front of Rig 18, the 2001 Ingersol Rand drill that bored the manhole to the miners, Yost spoke Tuesday about the days and nights he spent in Somerset County. From 8 a.m. to noon, a horse riding and stable area known as Yost Arena played host to Rig 18 and the men who worked to do their part to free the trapped miners. The rig, topped with an American flag, and two drill bits were on display for curious onlookers, interested media outlets and family and friends of employees.

The saga began for Yost at 12:30 a.m. last Thursday, when he received the first call for a rig, and ended more than three days later when the last miner was pulled from the ground. Ironically, when Yost received the first call notifying him that he may need to mobilize a drill, he was asleep. After that night, sleep became a luxury.

Throughout the ordeal, Schweiker was one of the most visible people on the scene. During the time Yost’s crews worked, he said Schweiker frequently shadowed him, and even asked why the drill bit broke when they hit 105 feet.

Although sometimes he was a bit of a nuisance, Yost said he thinks highly of Schweiker, not only because the governor offered him hospitality, but because he stayed at the site until the miners were brought out and provided support to the families.

“He had a job to do, and he was there the whole time,” Yost said.

After a quick response by Yost and his employees, the first drill rig arrived on site early Thursday to begin drilling the holes that would be used to pump the water out of the mine.

Three of the men who worked Rig 15 to drill the holes to pump water out of the mine, Camm Grim, Jason Braun and Jason McCartney, spoke about their experience. That rig was brought from a site in Waynesburg. The men said they made two 15-inch holes and two 24-inch holes.

“We were pumping out 20,000 gallons a minute,” Grim said.

The drill was about a half-mile from the rescue site and the men were the first ones to arrive after the six-inch hole that was used to pump in warm water was drilled.

They arrived at about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. Although assertions have been made that if the larger drill rig hadn’t broken the drill would have reached water, Grim said they were going to wait until the water level was down “no matter what.”

Yost said most of time he was working he merely tried to concentrate on the job at hand, but when the bit broke in the hole, “the mood got real down.” After breaking down Rig 18 from a site in Shinnston, W.Va., the equipment arrived at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. Drilling began about five hours later.

After several hours of productive work, the bit broke at about 1:30 a.m. Friday after going down 105 feet. Yost said a broken bit is not uncommon, but they went to the site with the best equipment and had extra parts on the way. Retrieving the broken bit proved to be a bit of a challenge, and Yost said it finally was obtained using a homemade tool with the help of employees of Star Iron Works of Punxsutawney.

“The groundhog got it out,” he joked. At 4:30 p.m. Friday, the broken bit was retrieved.

Yost said he had two crews on the big rig, and tried to work them for 12 hours at a time. Sometimes, they worked longer than that, he said.

“Everybody was gung ho to make things happen,” he said.

With the new bit 29-inch bit installed, work began again. However, the bit would not hammer, and after going five inches in two hours, Yost said they pulled it back out. In its place, a 26-inch bit was installed. After reaching 224 feet, Saturday afternoon, Yost said crews had to wait for four to five hours for the water level inside the mine to go down.

At 10:15 p.m. Saturday the drill made it into the mine. After reaching their goal, Yost said they shut down the air and water holes and “that’s when the raps came on the drill pipe and we knew they were still alive.”

Yost said after hearing the taps, crews accomplished the fastest drill pullout in history. In the span of less than two hours, all nine were pulled to safety. The 2,000-pound drill bit that fished the broken bit out of the hole sat in front of Rig 18, with “9 for 9, Yost Drilling” written in chalk on it. Flowers arrived at the area throughout the morning and a sign along the road congratulated the workers for a job well done.

Although the men were merely working a job, they knew it was more than that.

“We more or less were thinking about the job, but we tried to do our best to try to get them out,” Grim said. Yost, Grim and employees John Fisher and Rick Enoff are all 1979 graduates of Mapletown High School.

Yost said numerous other companies provided tools and labor for the rescue operation and he was thankful for all their assistance. Company founder Gene Yost, who is retired but still occasionally works as a consultant, said he is “proud that the guys got out and proud that they had a good bunch of guys up there working.”