East End shaft tragedy is forgotten by all but a few

Bill Hastie was 8 days old when an explosion at the Baltimore No. 5 shaft killed 92 men.

Today, the 90th anniversary of the second-worst mining accident in the history of the Wyoming Valley will be marked without commemorations, ceremonies or programs.

Hastie, president of the Greater Pittston Historical Society, is unsure why the blast in the Baltimore tunnel of the Delaware and Hudson Coal Co. hasn’t received the historical attention he feels it deserves.

It may have faded into the background because it wasn’t as deadly as the 1869 fire at the Avondale Colliery in Plymouth Township that claimed 110 lives or as well-publicized as the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster in Jenkins Township that killed 12 when the Susquehanna River broke through the mine roof, Hastie surmised. The story certainly was front and center the days after it happened.

At the time, the news was carried by newspapers across the state and as far away as Fort Wayne, Ind., and Fitchburg, Mass. Local accounts were graphic and descriptive, and detailed the magnitude of what happened at 6:40 a.m. in Wilkes-Barre’s East End.

“The women and men who were called to the scene by news of the accident made a sight of woe and sorrow that has not been duplicated by anything that has happened in the history of the city or vicinity,” said an article in that morning’s edition of The Times Leader. In the next day’s edition, survivor Jacob Milz recounted his ordeal.

“Every second the smoke became more dense, agonizing shrieks were heard on all sides. I really can’t say now how I managed to escape. All I remember is I kept crawling for the longest time.”

Hastie, 90, of West Pittston, guesses that perhaps the incident didn’t gain its deserved level of attention in the following years because mining deaths and injuries were so prevalent that it became an old story rather quickly. By the time the Knox Mine Disaster occurred, it grabbed all the headlines and older tragedies became ancient history.

The fact no state historic marker was ever erected at the site, along Scott Street, just north of Kidder Street, may also play a role in the incident’s slide into relative obscurity. Markers are erected at the sites of other area mine disasters, including Avondale, Knox and the Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston, where 58 were killed in 1896.

“There hasn’t been commensurate recognition to go along with the scale of the disaster,” said Hastie, who worked as an outside laborer at the Knox Mine.

Historians and mining aficionados are aware of the event, but Hastie said that other than them or those who lost a relative in the disaster, he doubts many under age 60 have heard of the Baltimore explosion, and even fewer can provide any details.