Seventeen years passed before anyone else took any interest in the site. This time it was biblical archaeologist, Ron Wyatt.
Wyatt quickly realized that this boat-shaped object was too big for him to handle. It was longer than a football field, as big as a battleship and almost completely buried in the ground.
A religious man, Ron spoke to a small group of trusted friends. They decided to pray for an earthquake - one that would somehow expose the object for exploration, but would not injure anybody.
On November 25, 1978, Local time, an earthquake pushed the object out of the ground or, more correctly, dropped the earth from around it.
The walls or sides of the object were now thrust some 20 feet out of the earth.

Remarkably, nobody was killed in the event. The local villagers are no strangers to earthquakes but this one was considered abnormal. Apparently it was preceded by the sky 'turning silver'.
To view the phenomenon, the villagers were all in the streets looking up at the strange sight. It is because they were all outside that nobody was killed.
The earthquake was described as a  "mu'cise"  (a miracle)