At 6:45 a.m. on Thursday morning, June 5, 1919, Jacob Milz, an elderly tracklayer employed by the Delaware & Hudson Coal Company, arrived for work at the Baltimore Tunnel No. 2 Mine in Wilkes-Barre's East End. It was a modern operation, equipped with electricity and a motor engine that transported the miners below ground via a train of cars connected to a trolley wire.
Milz was one of 150 men who descended into the mine in 14 coal cars that spring morning. Riding in the first car immediately behind the engine, he noted that "all the men were in good spirits, as they talked, laughed and joked with each other."
Shortly after, John McGroarty, the motorman, began driving the engine into the mine, he was informed that the trolley wire, which conducted electricity for the engine, had fallen from its bracket and needed repair. To avoid certain disaster, McGroarty
and his brakeman, James Kehoe, uncoupled the engine from the 14 cars forcing the train to a halt just 200 feet away from the mine entrance. Now the men would have to complete their journey on foot.
As they began to climb out of the coal cars, a smoky haze descended upon the miners. The only sound to be heard was the sizzling of the trolley wire as sparks flickered toward the rear car carrying 12 canisters of dynamite.
Suddenly there was an explosion. McGroarty and Kehoe, who were about to turn off the electricity so they could repair the fallen bracket, saw a sheet of flame flash behind them followed by an ear-piercing blast. In that instant, every man and boy on the train was either dead - having been burned to a crisp by the explosion - or dying a slow, excruciatingly painful death by suffocation and severe burning.
Somehow Milz escaped injury by jumping out of the first car and crawling into the G vein, a clear area with good air circulation. After clearing his throat and lungs of coal dust, he joined others in an effort to rescue those who were still alive.
Although the fire did not last long it resulted in 92 deaths and 44 injuries, making the Baltimore Tunnel explosion one of the worst disasters in Pennsylvania's industrial history.
This Wednesday the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will unveil a blue and gold historical marker dedicated to the Baltimore Tunnel Mine Disaster as part of this year's "Mining History Week." The ceremony will be held on Spring Street behind Home Depot in Wilkes-Barre.
There will also be a panel discussion on the disaster at 3 p.m. Thursday in the Fitz Room, Sheehey-Farmer Campus Center at King's College. Members of the panel will include professors Thomas Mackaman and Dan Clasby; Katie Lavery, who lost two uncles in the explosion, and King's students who worked with Lavery and the two professors to secure the PHMC marker.
The origins of the Baltimore Tunnel disaster can be traced to August 1918 when the United Mine Workers union won the right for workers to be transported into the coal mines. Prior to that time, miners were forced to walk miles underground before arriving at their place of work. Constantly exposed to the dangers of toxic gasses, cave-ins, and rock slides, they filed a grievance to end the treacherous practice.
The Delaware & Hudson responded to the complaint by providing one trip of cars for the miners each morning with the stipulation that the black blasting power used in the mines was to be transported in the last unoccupied car.
The use of electricity to transport miners to their workplace on the same train of cars as the blasting powder was not only a violation of the Department of the Mines' safety regulations, but an inevitable recipe for disaster. Naturally, the miners riding the cars were acutely aware of the danger presented by the black powder, but they were powerless to do anything about it.
Although the exact cause of the explosion was never determined, a subsequent investigation conducted by national mine experts and local mine inspectors identified three possibilities: (1) the ignition of the black powder by a short-circuited wire; (2) a miner's crowbar making contact with an overhead wire and (3) that a draft of 186,000 cubic feet of air per minute in the tunnel pulled in the flames from the black powder causing the explosion.
The horrific scene that followed became seared into the memories of those who observed it. Miner Thomas Dougherty, one of the fortunate survivors, was thrown out of a car by the blast and saved himself by jumping into a ditch.
"Bodies were all about," he recalled. "Some I know were dead, others were dying. The flames were terrific. They were all about. We were in a veritable hell. No man could possibly hope to escape with his life unless he got into the water, buried his face and rolled over and over as I did."
Brakeman Jim Kehoe related an even more gruesome experience. Working his way to the area closest to the dynamite car, he found men "being roasted alive" as they "shrieked for help." When he tried to pull one of the victims to safety, Kehoe ended up with "a hand full of skin and clothes" which he'd inadvertently "torn from the man's body."
Rescue crews instantly rushed to the scene in the hope of saving those who were still alive, while firefighters worked frantically to put out the flames. Many of the bodies were burned to a crisp. Others who were burned and tried to reach safety died of suffocation due to the sulfur fumes that filled the tunnel.
In a sad twist of fate, some of the victims had recently returned from World War I only to die in the anthracite pits of their hometown. Other victims were the fathers of soldiers from the 311th Field Artillery, which had been welcomed home just 12 hours earlier.
After the rescue effort was disbanded and the hospitals, filled to overflowing, the gruesome work of preparing the dead for burial began. Most of the victims were Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak and Russian and were burned beyond recognition. There must have been few, if any, viewings.
Perhaps the most poignant scene came on June 8 at a common funeral Mass at St. Mary's Polish Catholic Church on Parkland Avenue, where rows of caskets filled the aisles. The dead were later buried in a common grave at the parish cemetery in the Georgetown section of Wilkes-Barre Township.
If there was a silver lining, it came in the form of workmen's compensation paid to the widows and children of the deceased miners and some additional financial relief from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And still the survivors were left to wonder: "What price the life of a coal miner?"
William Kashatus teaches history at Luzerne County Community College. Email him at Bkashatus@luzerne.edu.Photos courtesy of Luzerne County Historical Society
Sunday 19 January 2014
http://citizensvoice.com/arts-living/phmc-to-unveil-marker-on-1919-baltimore-tunnel-mine-explosion-1.1617983
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