SOMERSET, PA. Prayer service marks anniversary of rescue

One of the miners got back into the capsule that brought him to safety.
SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) -- Eight of the nine men trapped for 77 frantic hours after they breached an adjacent, flooded mine, returned for a prayer service Sunday only yards away from where they emerged from the earth to a national audience last summer.
The men and their rescuers attended an hourlong service to mark the approaching one-year anniversary of their three-day ordeal, which ended when they were raised from hundreds of feet below ground in a yellow mine rescue capsule.
They say the memories of the flood at Quecreek Mine still haunt them daily.
One of the miners, Blaine Mayhugh, 32, climbed back inside the capsule that was brought to the farm for the service.
"My heart is actually fluttering," he said, cramped in the capsule. "It seems a lot harder to get in this now than it did then. It's still very tough for me."
Mayhugh shook hands with some of the 150 people at the service and also signed autographs with fellow miners Ronald Hileman, Dennis Hall, Tom Foy, Randy Fogle, Mark Popernack, John Phillippi and John Unger.
Miner Robert Pugh was out of town, they said.
Their situation
All of them said that not a day goes by that they do not thank their rescuers or God that they are alive. But they also say they suffer from nightmares and other ill effects from the three days they were trapped in a cold, dark and flooded mine.
"I go to see a doctor every week and I've got to take medication for anxiety," Foy said. "There's that time every night around 3:30 that I wake up thinking about it. I think it'll go away, but I'll never forget it."
The men became trapped July 24 last year when a coal extraction machine ripped into the adjacent Saxman Mine that was filled with an estimated 50 million gallons of water.
A preliminary report suggested that faulty maps led the men to believe they were still 300 feet away from the Saxman, though a final report has not been made public.
Nine miners escaped, but Foy and eight others were forced to retreat to higher ground deep inside the mine as rising water cut them off from a safe exit. The men were rescued early in the morning of July 28 when, after more than three days of drilling, the rescue capsule reached them through a narrow shaft.
Even as the men wrestle with the memories of tying themselves together in the mine so that no one would have to search for their bodies, there remains the question of what to do now.
Making ends meet
The men received $150,000 each for movie rights to their story, but say they know the money will not last.
Fogle is the only one of the nine who has returned to the mines, and most say they never will. Unger, though, said he may be forced back down to feed his family.
"I've got to work. If I didn't have to go back into the mine, I wouldn't," said Unger, 52. "But there's nothing else here. This is a depressed area."
Quecreek Mine is about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, where mining is sometimes the only work to be found that pays enough to support a family.
Only Fogle and Popernack -- who works for a mining company above ground -- have returned to work, the miners said.