Star Iron Works

摘要

Frank Stockdale, president of Star Iron Works in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, watched along with the rest of the nation as drillers worked around the clock to save nine miners who were trapped in the Quecreek coal mine in Somerset, Pennsylvania, in late July 2002. Stockdale received a phone call on the second day of the rescue efforts — a 1500-pound bit shanked and broke off in the hole of the first rescue shaft. He knew he had a matter of hours to build a custom overshot to fish the bit from the hole. "We immediately dropped everything, switched our machines over and fabricated a tool that worked," Stockdale remembers. It took Star Iron Works' employees only three hours and 10 minutes to finish the job — under normal circumstances it could have taken up to a week. By 12:45 p.m. that same day, the National Guard began airlifting the part to the rescue site, and by late afternoon the bit was recovered.