Nine for nine.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The rescue of the nine men trapped in the Black Wolf coal mine in Somerset, Pa., came as a helpful antidote to the summertime distractions of corporate scandals. The country relies upon people who produce the raw materials that form the base of the economic pyramid. Their jobs are hard and often dangerous. The miners and their rescuers showed heroism - and in a real sense, such people are heroes every day they show up for work.

Police, firefighters and soldiers are commonly held up as examples of American heroes, and rightly so. But the courage of those who protect people's lives should not obscure the heroism of workers who get up early each morning to spend a long shift underground, or on a fishing boat, or in the woods. These workers stand a statistically greater chance of being killed on the job than others, and it is the taxes they pay and the goods they produce that support the rest of the American economy.

The sudden terror that confronted the nine miners is unimaginable. They accidentally pierced the wall of an older mine, and 50 millions gallons of frigid water rushed into their shaft, 240 feet below the surface. The miners kept their heads, tied themselves together so that none would be lost, shared a sandwich, wrote farewell notes to their families and waited three days to be rescued.

Above ground, a different sort of heroism was on display - the heroism of determination and skill, abetted by luck. Undeterred by setbacks such as broken drill bits, the rescuers made the brilliant decision to sink a pipe through which compressed air could be pumped. The air pushed back the floodwaters and kept the miners warm enough to survive. Though the chances of a successful rescue receded by the hour, the crews persevered and brought the miners out alive: nine for nine.

Though most coal now comes from strip mines, thousands of miners in places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia still go beneath the ground each day. Mining coal is more dangerous than mining gold, copper or other minerals, because the rock tends to be softer and huge quantities of material must be brought to the surface.

The people who do this work keep the nation's lights on - 54 percent of the United States' electricity comes from coal-burning power plants. The miners are more essential to the nation's well-being than companies like Enron, which traded energy produced by others. As Enron and other frothy economic concoctions collapse to nothingness, the safe return of nine men who face real risks to produce real goods is tremendously gratifying.