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Tuesday, July 30, 2002

By the Associated Press

The third-shift crew returns to work yesterday at Somerset County's Geronimo mine, about 10 miles from where nine coal miners were trapped for 78 hours last week.

	Miners returned to work yesterday at the Geronimo mine in Somerset County. (Charles Rex Arbogast, Associated Press)

"I was thinking, 'Is this going to be different today, like scary?' But it wasn't," Tim Berkey said after his shift. "It was another day. Just something to think about while you're working."

Berkey, 43, and other miners in the area who work for a different company, GM&S, volunteered to assist the rescue effort at the Quecreek Mine. Berkey said he was with 15 other men pushing a pump inside the mine when they first got word late Saturday that the men were still alive.

"We were giving high-fives. The guy ran into the mine, yelling, 'They're alive. They're alive,' " Berkey said.

Yesterday, it was time for Berkey and hundreds of others to pull on their blue coveralls and hardhats and go back to work. Carrying their lunches in plastic bags and lugging along water in plastic milk jugs, they boarded small motorized vehicles and headed underground.

Most of the mine's 55 coal workers returned to work, to the surprise of foreman Craig Hamilton.

"I was afraid a lot of them might not show up and just say, 'The heck with it.' Since things turned out good they way they did, everybody did show up," said Hamilton, who added that he has reconsidered his career since the accident.