Fraternity-Testvériség, 2008 (86. évfolyam, 1-3. szám)
2008-01-01 / 1. szám
remaining bodies. ” An inquiry into the disaster afterwards concluded, as was usually the case at that time of Pennsylvania coal mining, that the mine owner, the Pittsburgh Coal Company, was not at fault. It issued a statement that the explosion was presumed to have occurred in an area that the Fire Boss had cordoned off, but a group of miners had entered anyway carrying open lamps The Washington Penna. Reporter on December 20 also told of the horror of recovering the dead. “Fifteen minutes after the explosion occurred, the debris from the entrance had been cleared away and the first rescue party entered. Workmen from the other mines, the Wickhaven and the Banning, rushed from their places without instructions from their superiors. By 7:00 last evening, penetration had been made to 5,000feet from the entrance to the mine. First Bodies Found. Right at this point is located a shanty in which the pit boss makes his headquarters while in the mine. As it hove into view, it presented an uncanny appearance with a grave-like stillness about it. Here within the four walls of this little wooden structure were huddled five dead bodies. Four of them rested on an improvised bench and the fifth, headless, believed to be that of the mine foreman, W. S. Campbell, lay on the floor. Stout-hearted enough to dare death themselves in any form, the rescue party stood trembling at this ghastly find. When their find was reported to General Manager J. M. Armstrong, he gave instructions that no bodies be brought out until the crowd, which besieged the entrance, had departed. ” After the bodies were taken out and identified, they were encased in shrouds and caskets ordered by the company. Representatives of the National Casket Company and the United States Casket Company of Pittsburgh secured the order for the caskets and supplied. It was impressed on these men when the order was given that it was the intention to accord the victims of the disaster a respectable interment. Two hundred and fifty caskets were ordered. With all the sadness that the accident took on, in the same ratio of sobriety was the work of rescue begun. Men seemed to fairly spring from the ground, anxious to pull down the barriers between their unfortunate fellow men and liberty, which in this case meant life. ” Pete Starry, a mining historian, provided an interesting article to the “Coal Miner’s Memorial,” from the “United Mine Workers Journal,” Dec. 1, 1957 entitled, “Main Thing Was Management Neglect.” “All of the mining disasters of December, 1907, had several things in common. The main thing was management neglect and in some cases brutal criminal negligence. Black powder was used for blasting in all of these stricken mines. Coal dust was allowed to accumulate in spite of warnings from the English that it was highly explosive. All of the mines were gassy and seem to have been poorly ventilated. It is quite possible that the Jacobs Creek disaster would not have taken place if the men had been allowed by Providence one more day to dig out 40 feet of coal to reach a new shaft the company had sunk in an effort to improve ventilation in the mine. One of the victims of the explosion was a mine foreman, H. S. Campbell. His widow reported that his main preoccupation and worry in the months preceding the blast was with the gassy condition and the poor ventilation in the Darr Mine. He pestered the company about it and it was at his urging that the new ventilating shaft had been sunk. Campbell’s worry, which made him tell his wife he could not even think about Christmas, goaded the company into action, but it was 24 hours too late for 239 men. ” The youngest victims, ten-years-old, were loading coal. When the dead men were brought out from the mine, one rescuer noted that “they looked like blackened railroad ties.” A trench 113 ft. long was dug for immediate burial because most men could not be recognized. Rescuers found some inside as far in as a mile, and, in one case, a few were huddled together in an attitude of prayer. One of the two survivors of the explosion was Tom Williams who was in a mine car near the entrance after leaving the blacksmith’s shop a few minutes before the blast. The other survivor crawled out of the mine covered with soot and blinded by the blast. One miner’s remains stayed inside as there wasn’t enough left to remove. It was reported by the Washington Penna. Reporter on Dec. 20st that the “women ran weeping and wailing from their homes and then returned home stunned and waiting for word of their husbands. The men gave more outward evidence of grief, but not one family went unaffected. Many mothers could not speak English and depended on one another for information as bodies were brought out.” Although the first report filed said that the owners of the mine were in no way responsible, it should also be noted that the mine superintendent and the former fire boss soon resigned for reasons of the “gaseous nature” of the mine and that the coal company purchased the plot of ground for a cemetery for the dead. The use of open lamps was also abandoned after this event. By 1910, the Pittsburgh Coal Company had resumed operations at the Darr Mine, although the company dropped the name Darr Mine and simply operated the mine as an entry of the adjacent Banning No. 3 Mine. In 1919, the Pittsburgh Coal Company closed the Banning No. 3 Mine and the old Darr Mine because it produced less than 30,000 tons of coal although it employed 227 persons. The Pennsylvania EPA wrote, “The Darr and 16 Fraternity - Testvériség - Winter 2007/Spring 2008
