A group of miners with rescue equipment pose near the mouth of a mine in Las Animas County, Colorado. Many of the men hold face masks with tubes connected to respirator mechanisms strapped to their chests, about 1900. History Colorado.
'Beats working in a coal mine |
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
My mother said she remembered (even as a six-year-old girl,) growing up in the Cumberland Gap near the boundaries of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia – what an ominous sign it was, to see my grandfather in his blue dress suit during the week.
It signaled there had been an accident at the mine and there was a funeral to
go to.
Or to hear “the siren” wailing from the commissary (company store) and to see both of her parents scramble over to the tipple – her dad as a mine foreman, her mother as a mining company nurse. Again, mine accident.
I remember my heart breaking with the news from West Virginia in early 2006.
On January 2, 2006, rumors of a “miracle” quickly turned to tragedy when 12 coal miners were confirmed dead 40 hours after an explosion in Sago, Upshur County. One person who was trapped, Randal McCloy Jr., barely survived as he watched his 12 colleagues succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning.
My granddad worked all his life in the coal mines but none of his children followed him down that hole.
My uncles and aunts instead pursued difficult jobs in warehouses, and tanneries, and the building trades, and their own businesses. Or some of them went north toward Detroit and the auto industry.
I recall that generation (aunts, uncles, my mother, etc.) talking about their various blue-collar endeavors with always the common refrain, “It beats working in a coal mine.”
Many would add, “but it doesn’t pay as well.”
Though it has been 101 years, and it is a very different kind of mining, this area has felt such pain. The Jan. 28, 1904 edition of the Victor Daily Record cried out the headline, “The 15 bodies of the Independence accident were brought from the shaft house early yesterday morning to the two undertaking parlors in this city.”
We know also of other violence during the strikes and the dynamiting of the platform.
We know always of the caution required.
But still, no matter what profession we toil in, news of mine accidents is a terrible thing. Even on a bad day most of us can agree with my uncles and aunts.
“It beats working in a coal mine.”
The Buffalo Creek Flood disaster occurred on February 26, 1972, when three impoundment dams on Buffalo Creek holding coal mining wastewater from the Buffalo Mining Company collapsed, one into the next, like dominoes.
Dam #3, the uppermost, went first. It had been built out of poorly selected mine waste and on coal slurry, not bedrock. Dam #3 had long exhibited problems, and in 1970 the state recommended an emergency spillway be built, which never happened. The mine operators assertively ignored federal regulations as well.
During the two days before the collapse, 3.72 inches of rain fell on Logan County, enough to push the water within a foot of Dam #3’s crest, which still had no spillway. The situation was precarious, but no warnings were issued. When Dam #3 fell, its toxic contents overwhelmed Dam #2, which also collapsed, followed by Dam #1, sending a wall of water 30-40’ feet high through more than a dozen towns along Buffalo Creek Hollow, home to some 5,000 residents.
Buffalo Creek was one of the worst West Virginia coal mine accidents in terms of lives lost, property destroyed, and damage to the environment. The death toll was 125 people, with over 1,110 injured. More than 500 structures were destroyed, mostly houses but mobile homes and businesses as well. It would be more than 30 years before the fish population that died in the suddenly toxic Buffalo Creek waters would be restocked.
A report by the West Virginia Ad Hoc Commission of Inquiry into the Buffalo Creek Flood concluded the Pittston Company, the parent of Buffalo Mining, “has shown flagrant disregard for the safety of residents of Buffalo Creek and other persons who live near coal-refuse impoundments.” Many of the lawsuits that followed were settled for far less than the original amount. Survivors collectively sued for $64 million and settled for $13.5 million. The state itself sued for $100 million and later settled for $1 million.
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