Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith

by Jeff Goodell, Quecreek Miners

The nation stopped and held its collective breath as word spread of the plight of the nine Pennsylvania coal miners who where trapped underground for 77 hours. Nine miners were below when water trapped in an adjacent mine burst through the wall of the new mine they were working. As the air grew thinner and the men grew colder, they listened to the water rising around them in the honeycomb of coal veins. Sitting in a small air pocket, the men wrote farewell notes to their families and sealed them in a lunch bucket.On the surface, the rescue effort became hampered when a special drill bit snapped. The drill would lay idle for 14 hours, effectively halting the rescue, as a replacement was brought in. Hope and despondency alternated, as the determined rescue team made progress, then hit setbacks. Below ground, standing in water and chilling temperatures, the men rode the same waves of hope and despair, all in complete darkness.The successful rescue of the Nine for Nine miners lifted the spirits of an entire nation. Now everyone can hear the complete story of this harrowing accident -- how these men and their families had the strength and bravery it took to survive the incredible ordeal, and of the frantic efforts to save them.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

228 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1900

About the author

Jeff Goodell’s latest book is The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He is the author of six previous books, including The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, which was a New York Times Critics Top Book of 2017. He has covered climate change for more than two decades at Rolling Stone and discussed climate and energy issues on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is a Senior Fellow at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.

Reviews

[Laura Wonderchick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a reread for me tho it had been so long it was like reading a new story. Highly emotional & riveting. An exceptional story that stays in your mind long after you finish.
So many thanks to the author for this copy!

[T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gift from my sister a few Christmases ago. Guess am always a sucker for stories about the human folly and spirit, and it shows. This was more of an array of interviews with a bit of narrative. I wonder if book deals are already being made re: the Chilean miners.

An excerpt:

"How do you die with dignity? We talked about it. People fall out of boats and they drown, but when you know it's going to happen to you, how do you make yourself drown? Am I going to just start swallowing this water? Because nobody ever takes water into their lungs on purpose. So how do you do that? Do you inhale it like a cigarette? That's what I was thinking. Do I inhale this water like a cigarette? I decided that when it got up to my neck, I was going to swim out. I never said nothing. But that's what I decided. Who wants to struggle for that last breath? You're going to die. There's no hope." (Moe, p. 97)

[Edwina Book Anaconda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting and real story of the nine miners trapped for 77 hours in a Pennsylvania mine,
as told by the miners themselves.
No candy-coated clean up on their language so those offended by cussing might want to skip this one.

[Judd Street · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Our story" is an account of the 2002 Quecreek Mine rescue in Pennsylvania. Driven by the testimony of the miners themselves, this relatively short account (176 pages) is a straight-to-the-point retelling of how the miners saw their entrapment and rescue.

(As a note, I read this book in a trio with Deep Dark Down https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and The Last Man Out https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... As such, my review is heavily relative, comparing this book against the other two.)

Unlike many mining disasters - and the other two books I reviewed - this one was caused not by a collapse but by a flood. The water trapped the miners, rising towards the corner in which they were hiding. This water-based disaster is, compared to other mine collapses, an urgent kind of catastrophe, and the book follows a similarly high-paced approach.

In his writing, Goodell lets the voice of the miners shine through. Indeed, probably about 50-70% of the book is told in quotation-based snippets from the men in the mine and those above. This leads to a really page-turning kind of read, with rapid plot development and a race towards the rescue. It lacks, however, some of the nuance of the other two books.

If my star-losing complaint with Deep Down Dark, however, was a lack of analysis about the systematic features (e.g., why did the disaster happen; who was to blame; how was the mine run; more detail about the rescue; etc)... it seems unfair in retrospect. This book contains basically /no/ investigation of these features, staying strictly to a tick-tock narrative of the happenings in the mine and rescue. This leads to very engaging reading, but a rather thin account of the disaster more broadly. Of course, I can't fault Goodell to a huge degree here (I think he just has a different audience in mind), but it's a very different - and much more superficial - approach than the other two books.

That said, it's still a really interesting a fun book, and the most intriguing page turner of the mining trio I just finished. If you're looking for a quick hit mine story, check this one out!

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is true story about the trapped Pennsylvania miners and the excruciating rescue effort to save them, as told by them. The book lays out a narrative of what was happening above ground, including excerpts from their friends and family, mixed with the recollections of the individual miners about what was happening below ground. Beginning with the initial strike of the mining equipment against the wall that held back the massive underground water supply (in an old abandoned mine) and following all the way through to the aftermath of the event, it's impossible not to feel fully vested in these miners' survival.

It's a two-sided story that conveys the hope and heartache, the faith and the futility that everyone must have been feeling at the time. Incorporating all of the first-hand accounts really brought the emotions to the forefront, and does justice to what everyone involved suffered through. This is a compelling first-hand account of a terrible event that changed all involved, and that raised prayers around the world.

[Amelia King · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book exceeded my expectations. It told a brutally honest, truthful, and multi-view story. I became engrossed in the story and each of the characters. I really enjoyed reading this.

Two criticisms: It was hard to keep everyone straight with both nicknames and real names being used. Also, it annoyed me how it kept flipping between the miners and those aboveground. I would get sucked into one side of the story and just when it was getting good it would flip to the other side and I felt like my excitement had to start over.

Good overall.

[Susan Montelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read this book once before and opted to read it again...this is a heart-wrenching true story of events that could have easily ended in tragedy. In reading the accounts by the men involved and the families who had to endure the end result (good or bad), it tears at the heart to know that in an instant one's lives can be irrevocably changed. The other side of that is to become keenly aware of our resiliency and determination to live - to survive our circumstances. Good reading...

[Erion Prometheus · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting account from the men's perspective, as well as from the perspective of the wives. The frustration the wives had dealing with misinformation from the media. The struggles the men dealt with in the depths of the earth waiting to be rescued.
The language is coarse (cussing). There is male locker room type banter. The grammar is annoying, misusing was instead of were.
Overall I'm glad I read their story.

[Sam Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live about 30 minutes from where this occurred. I remember the days as they passed by and then the excitement of “all 9 alive”. It was interesting reading the miners and their family members perspectives.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true story told by the miners and their families about being sick in the Quecreek mine near Somerset Pennsylvania.

[Beth]

Very good read... could not put it down... Horrible what these men went through. Glad they survivied.

[leslie Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I could feel the emotion in the story. It actually brought me to tears. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

[Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book in my personal opinion was well written, i enjoyed how every line in the book was something that was said by one of the miners. This book main story is about how nine miners got trapped in a mine in the state of Pennsylvania. They were trapped for a total of 77 hours underground.

I enjoyed this book as i said before the reason that i enjoy this book is because it involves something that really happened, not just some make believe story. The whole book is accounts from the different miners and what they thought was going to happen. The thing that made this book really great was it told how the miners survived.The reason that the miners were trapped in the first place is because they were mining deep in a shaft then they punctured the wall of the cave and water flooded through. The reason there was water i because they were mining close to a abandoned mine which filled up with water over many years. "To keep our spirits up, we talked about what we were going to do when we got out.... Nobody had anything extravagant in mind. This is a quote said by one of the miners. The reason i like this quote out of all of them is because it shows someone taking a leader role which some people can't do in a crisis.

The only thing about this book i didn't like was that the accounts were taken after it happened so the miners could have changed some of the things. Such as what could have happened but overall i did enjoy this book a good amount.

[J.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moving first-hand account of the disaster that trapped nine miners inside the Quecreek Mine in 2002. I remember watching this unfold on the news. The book is well-written, compelling without being overly sensationalizing, heart-felt without becoming preachy or zealous. While I enjoyed reading the different points of view from the miners and their families, I will admit the cast of characters got a little unwieldy at times, and it was hard to keep everyone straight when in the thick of things. I would have liked more straight narration at that point of the book, though the author relied heavily on the first-hand accounts (written in block format as interview quips instead of woven into the prose).

Still, this was an interesting up-close look at the workings of a mine and the harrowing four days spent waiting for rescue.

[Valarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very interesting to hear the miners' side of the Quecreek, PA mining disaster. The journalist who compiled their narratives did an excellent job of preserving their voices, only inserting his own narration when it was necessary for historical or technical explanations. However riveting the plot may have been, though, there wasn't a lot to add to the media coverage that had already taken place when this book was published. Psychological analyses or explorations of the causes of the disaster were absent, so the book could have been just a transcription of morning-show interviews. Overall, I enjoyed reading it, but don't feel that it is a necessary book for anyone else to read.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only major criticism of this is that it really would've benefited from some kind of index, ideally with photos, since it was hard to keep the nine miners' (most of whom had nicknames) straight and matched with their wives. Otherwise, though, fairly well-told piece of human spirit type journalism without all the preachy, moral-laden crap you get from lesser treatments of similar topics (e.g. "Miracle on the Hudson" book). Nice oral history setup that lets the miners and their families speak for themselves. I totally cried a hundred times while reading it. You can't make this shit up.

[Vicki Krivak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty easy read and insightful into the ordeal these nine men and their families went through.
I think this book could have been much more, it seemed to be lacking something. I gave it three stars.

[Akrista · Rating 3 out of 5]

For someone who knows nothing of the life of a miner it is a good read. It is an interesting perspective from the miners and the families of the miners. It takes someone special to work in this environment.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-telling of this mine disaster from the men who survived it. You will run through a lot of emotions as you read this.

[Cws]

363.11-G

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting story. Hard to imagine what these men went through. Can't wait to visit this site next week.

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not read very many survival stories but this one was amazing.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story of true heroes in Pennsylvania. It is amazing that they made it out and lived to tell about their ordeal.

[Steve Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This entire book is in the words of the participants. The author was really a collator more than a writer. The story was very compelling and real.