SOMERSET, (Pennsylvania) July 28: Nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped for three days in a flooded mine travelled one-by-one to safety on Sunday in a cramped yellow rescue cage hauled up from the shaft 73 metres underground.

Emerging from the subterranean darkness and into the glare of klieg lights in the predawn hours, the helmeted men with coal-blackened faces and soaking wet bodies, were moved quickly onto stretchers as rescue workers cheered each new arrival.

“All nine. All nine,” Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker shouted, pumping his fist into the air as the last man was pulled to the surface after a trip of several minutes through a 66-cm wide shaft at the Que Creek mine in Somerset County, 96 km southeast of Pittsburgh.

Six of the miners, including one suffering from minor chest pains and another with an injured shoulder, were in good or fair condition 40 kms away in Johnstown. The other three were in satisfactory condition at Somerset Hospital.

They were reunited with their families at the hospitals, which were inundated with donations of chewing tobacco, a miners’ favourite.

“What took you guys so long?” were the first words the miners uttered when rescuers established contact down in the shaft, said state Environmental Secretary David Hess.

“They were in great spirits and that was terrific to see the ninth guy get out of there,” Hess told CNN. “That’s what we worked for 77 hours.”

The miners appeared to be alert but some were suffering from hypothermia, with body temperatures 2-3 degrees Celsius below normal after 72 hours in air and water temperatures as low as 10 degrees Celsius.

DELAYS: The crew had been excavating bituminous coal 2.4 kms from the entrance of the mine late on Wednesday when they inadvertently broke through into a flooded adjacent shaft that had been abandoned in the 1950s.