SPECIAL REPORT | FULL COVERAGE

A day of hard work, hope and triumph

Mud-caked rescuers smile after making contact with the trapped miners late Saturday.

SOMERSET, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- It will soon be said -- if it hasn't been said already -- by rescuers that they never lost hope of finding the trapped miners alive. That may be true. But at about 4 p.m. Saturday, after a pipe broke on one of the rigs, it looked awfully bleak.

Already the rescue operation had dragged on much longer than anyone expected, and when the drilling stopped again, the 200 or so workers at the site suddenly became solemn and quiet. Too much was going wrong, it seemed.

From a bluff above the drilling platform, a half-dozen members of the Sipesville Fire Department stared at the rig for a good half-hour, none of them saying a word. Nearby, rescuers took off their hard hats and flopped on the grass, or grabbed a few slices of pizza and talked about anything but those nine miners trapped in the darkness and cold.

Some, like Barbara Scherer, a Red Cross volunteer, tried to put a happy spin on it: "Forty years ago, there would have been no chance of rescuing these miners. So I guess we should be grateful for all this equipment. But I don't understand why it has to break so much."

No one blamed the drillers. At the rescue site, they were heroes. Operating the rigs is a thankless, dirty, exhausting job, but no one at the rescue site was under any illusions about how important they were, or how skilled.

Workers lined up on the hillside to watch men like Elmer Lloyd of Falcon Drilling run from rig to rig, keeping it spinning steadily, hooking the hoist to a new 30-foot extension and lifting it into the air with a kind of balletic grace. The broken drill bits were not a result of their mistakes, but proof of just difficult and delicate their work really was.

Strong community, strong connections

CNN NewsPass Video    •  CNN's Jeff Flock visits an abandoned Pa. mine   •  Surveyor used GPS to locate miners   •  Rescued miners go home   •  Miners express appreciation  MORE STORIES   •  Pennsylvania panel to explore mining accident   •  Flooded mine could be idle for months   •  Pa. governor: Mine's operator 'owes answers'   •  A turning point in the rescue effort   •  Miners braved harrowing conditions   •  Previous mining accidents were minor » Story archive  RESOURCES   •  Jeff Goodell: Despair turns to joy   •  Gov. Schweiker: Mine probe to seek answers   •  Rescued miner: 'It was a team effort'   •  Why we burn coal  EXTRA INFORMATION   •  Gallery: The rescued miners   •  Gallery: Rescue quotes   •  Graphic: Diagram of the Quecreek Mine   •  Map: Mining accident   •  Timeline: What happened, and when

Throughout the day, you also got a strong feeling for how deeply the people of Somerset County are connected to each other. Not only does everyone know each other, most of them had some connection to the miners trapped underground:

It was this sense of connectedness that kept people's faith alive, and which made this rescue such a community effort.

Perhaps the most powerful emotion on the site, however, was the deep respect that was expressed for the men who were trapped below. Not only because many of them were friends and family of the rescuers, but because these men were coal miners.

Coal mining is a dying business, and a dying way of life. But it is also a way of life that builds deep bonds between men, for it is honest and hard and rewarding in a way that no job in front of a computer screen ever can be. The people of Somerset County understand this. This was one of the reasons such a tremendous effort was put forth here, why they were going to stop at nothing until these men were taken out of the ground.

Three miraculous words

At about 11 p.m. Saturday, the site grew quiet. The firefighters had put on their helmets and gloves, the stretchers were laid out on the hillside. As the floodlights went up and word passed through the crowd that they were about to "pop open the hole," I sat with Deb Yonkin, a straight-talking woman whose family once owned the farmland beneath which these men were trapped.

"These men were digging coal so that I can have light when I turn on a switch, and take a hot shower," she told me, looking down at the furious activity around the drill hole.

"All the luxuries of my life would be impossible without them. I think we owe them respect and gratitude."

Nearby, Doug Custer, one of the miners who made it out when the ordeal began, seemed about to collapse with fatigue and tension and worry about what the rescuers would find. He'd told his wife earlier in the day: "I'm going to prepare for the worst, and hope for the best."

Miners applaud as their rescued comrades are pulled from the mine early Sunday.

There was about 10 minutes of confusion -- a bulldozer was called in, men ran back and forth carrying tools. There seemed to be nothing happening.

Then a man in a white polo shirt and a hard hat ran up the hill from the drill hole. He said something to Richard Stickler, director of Deep Mine Safety for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and almost instantly, three miraculous words spread through the crowd: They're all alive!

Jeff Goodell is the author of "Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family." He is working on a book about coal and energy in the United States.