SOMERSET, Pa. ? Rescuers rushed in heavy equipment Thursday in a race to save nine coal miners trapped in a shaft filling up with millions of gallons of water. Crews were heartened to hear tapping and other sounds indicating at least some of them were alive.

The tapping created “a glimmer of hope” that the miners, who were trapped 230 feet underground at the Quecreek Mine late Wednesday, were safe, said Betsy Mallison, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

“It is a race against time because the water is still filling (the mine),” she said. “We don’t want to raise expectations at this time, but it’s a good sign.”

Rescue workers at the mine about 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh heard the tapping around 3 a.m. after drilling a 6-inch-wide air hole. David Sbaffoni, with the state Bureau of Deep Mine Safety, said he had no doubt that at least some of the miners were alive.

“We tapped and we heard tapping back,” Sbaffoni said. He said the miners apparently dashed into an air pocket about 200 feet from where they had apparently breached the wall of another mine this one abandoned and flooded.

Although workers could not hear tapping by late morning because of the noise from machinery, seismic devices indicated noises in the area where the miners were believed to be trapped.

“We still believe there are miners alive. We obviously don’t know how many,” said David Hess, secretary of the state Environmental Department.

Emergency crews pumped air down the 6-inch-hole in hopes of creating air pressure that would keep any rising water away from the miners.

A larger drilling rig able to bore a 36-inch hole arrived from West Virginia in early afternoon. Officials said it could take as many as 18 hours to drill the larger hole.

Workers would occasionally rap the metal drill in the hole with a metal mallet, then put an ear to the machinery to listen for a response.

“It’s a very ticklish situation we’re in,” said Hess. “It’s very touch and go.”

Another crew of miners warned by the men who were trapped managed to wade to safety in water up to their necks after the accident shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday sent water gushing into the mine, authorities said.

The two crews of miners were 300 feet underground and about a mile and a half from the entrance when they hit the abandoned mine that was last active in the 1950s, Mallison said.

Pennsylvania requires 200 feet of solid rock be maintained between mines, and officials said the miners believed they had about 300 feet to go before hitting the adjacent mine.

“The mine maps we were relying on were apparently wrong. But there will be an investigation into that,” Hess said.

The first crew was able to radio the second and warn them about the water, officials said.

All the trapped miners were believed to be in the same area of a coal seam that is about 4 feet high, officials said. Up to 60 million gallons of water, believed to be between 50 and 60 degrees, had rushed into the mine, according to state mining officials at the site.

Because of the water temperature, rescuers were worried that some of the miners might suffer hypothermia.

About 80 relatives of the miners gathered inside a fire hall in Sipesville, two miles from the mine. Red Cross grief counselors were on hand, and the mood inside the fire hall was described by a disaster worker as tense, with little talking as the families huddled together.

The mine was being excavated using a technique in which miners excavate roomlike sections leaving behind pillars of coal that can support the roof.

Members from a specialized mine rescue team from Indiana, Pa., as well as the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety and federal occupational safety experts were on the scene.

There has been at least one prior accident at the mine, operated by Black Wolf Coal Co., according to the state Bureau of Deep Mine Safety. No one was injured when a section of the roof collapsed last October.

The company employs about 30 miners, according to department records. The mine began operations about a year ago, the company said.

The site is in largely rural Somerset county, about 10 miles from the site where hijacked Flight 93 crashed during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Miner Ted Lepley, who works for Black Wolf Coal but was not on the scene at the time of the accident, stood near the mine’s entrance Thursday morning awaiting news.

“Those are my brothers down there,” Lepley said. “God help them. Nobody knows what’s going on.”

On Sept. 23, 13 miners were killed in Brookwood, Ala., when two explosions 45 minutes apart rocked a coal mine there. Ten of the dead were men who had been trying to rescue co-workers injured in the first blast, only to be killed themselves by the second blast. That was the nation’s deadliest coal mining accident since 1984.