Danger, DEATH & DISASTERS

The young men had attended a dance here in town and afterwards went to the house of a friend on the hill above catsburg mine to spend the night. The next morning they started home at 8:00  they took the path traveled by all the local residents of the hill. 

As they were walking down the hill they passed the opening of a cave in the abandoned workings of the mine.

It was at this point one of the four slipped and his hat rolled to the bottom of the hole and into the mine.

Not suspecting any danger he scrambled down to regain his lost property, and upon reaching the hat was overcome with black damp.

His companions seeing him fall sent one of them in to see what was the trouble and upon reaching the bottom he too fell to the ground with a loud cry for help! Two more friends rushed to the rescue only to fall unconscious.

A fifth member of the party became alarmed and went to the edge of the hole and seeing his friends lying there quietly, Called but got no answer, and then feeling sure that something terrible had happened started on a run to the catsburg mine for help.

A rescue party was quickly  assembled and hurried to the scene.

They lowered  him down in the hole on a rope to help his friends but he too was rendered unconscious and had to hauled back out

The news spread like wildfire and soon an immense crowd was gathered at the hole. Many plans were tried to rescue  the young men without success until Iron Hooks were attached to long poles by which means the bodies were dragged from the mine.

The hole into which the men fell was about 25 feet deep sloping down gradually so that if the men were not overcome  by BLACK DAMP they could have easily crawled out 

The young man who was lowered in to rescue his friends will recover

At 10:20 a.m., December 6, 1907, explosions occurred at the No. 6 and No. 8 mines at Monongah, West Virginia. The explosions ripped through the mines at 10:28 a.m., causing the earth to shake as far as eight miles away, shattering buildings and pavement, hurling people and horses violently to the ground, and knocking streetcars off their rails. Three-hundred and sixty-two men and boys died. It remains the worst mine disaster in the history of the United States   

For a time pandemonium reigned. Every local mine official was missing. It was impossible to fathom the nature and extent of the catastrophe, or to tell whether either mine was on fire or full of gas.

Soon after the explosion, four miners emerged through an outcrop opening, dazed and bleeding but otherwise unharmed. The stunned survivors could tell nothing of the fate of the others still underground.

With the hundreds of shrieking, half-crazed women and crying children came every man left in the town. Volunteers were willing and anxious to help with the rescue work.

Frantically, they cleared away the wreckage at the entrance and tried to force their way into the mine. They soon began to succumb to the toxic mine air and had to be rescued themselves.

The explosion filled the mine with “black damp”, an atmosphere in which no human being could live. It blocked the main heading with wrecked cars and timbers, and demolished one of the fans, which greatly restricted ventilation.

Choking coal dust, rubble, and wrecked equipment impeded the progress of volunteer rescue teams. The No. 8 mine’s huge ventilation fan had been destroyed, and a smaller fan was used to ventilate both mines. Brick stoppings, the partitions used to direct air through the mines, had been blown out. As rescue parties slowly advanced, they used canvas curtains to restore ventilation, dilute gas, and disperse dust.

At the bottom of No. 6 slope, debris from a wrecked trip was found scattered for 250 fhe entire trip consisting of eighteen loaded two-ton cars went down the incline. The explosion occurred before the cars had gone into the pit mouth and before the trip had reached the bottom of the slope

At 4:00 p.m., moaning was heard near a crop hole, and a rescuer was lowered through the hole on a rope. About 100 feet below, he found miner Peter Urban sitting on the shattered body of his brother, Stanislaus, staring glassy-eyed into space as he sobbed uncontrollably. He was the last survivor of the Monongah disaster.

Exhausted volunteers found conditions in the mines almost unbearable, heat was intense, and afterdamp caused headaches and nausea. In some headings, ventilation materials and bodies had to be hauled 3,000 feet over massive roof falls and wrecked machinery, mine cars, timbers, and electrical wiring. The stench of death was barely tolerable, and became overpowering as the search dragged on.

Searchers never lost sight of the fact that there might possibly be some men in the mine alive. They continued to explore all parts of the workings with all possible speed, leaving unnecessary work for another time.

Embalmers worked around the clock in shifts. Caskets lined both sides of the main street. The bank served as a morgue. Churches conducted funeral services several times a day as dozens of men dug long rows of graves on nearby hillsides. Disputes flared over identification of victims, and more than once, a body was claimed by two families.

By December 10, the number of people killed was over 175. It was obvious to most rescue workers, but not to relatives of missing men, that Peter Urban would be the last man to be brought out alive. By Thursday, December 12, all workings had been ventilated and searched and 337 bodies recovered. Twenty-five more victims were found during cleanup operations 

PETER URBAN

Died in the same mine 20 years later.