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November 16, 2009

Remembering the Exeter mine disaster 111 years later

Historian and miner speak to West Pittston Historical Society on 1898 accident that killed nine men.

JANINE UNGVARSKY Times Leader Correspondent

WEST PITTSTON -- Contemporary news accounts called it a “a fearful mine calamity.” One hundred eleven years later, two local men want to make sure it’s remembered.

“The Avondale disaster in 1869 killed 110 and was the worst. The Knox disaster in 1959 killed 12 and was the last,” said sociology professor and author Robert Wolensky, “but in between the worst and the last, there were hundreds and hundreds of smaller disaster like the Exeter Mine disaster.”

On Sunday, Wolensky and former miner William Hastie spoke to the West Pittston Historical Society on the 1898 accident that killed nine men.

“Most of the 35,000 men and boys who died in anthracite mining accidents died in twos and threes and tens, and Bill and I decided a long time ago that we wanted to make sure they were remembered,” said Wolensky.

The Exeter mine — located about 400 yards down the railroad tracks from the intersection of Baltimore and Tunkhannock, near the Exeter-West Pittston border — claimed the lives of nine miners on their way to work at 6:30 on the morning of Nov. 5, 1898, Wolensky told those gathered in the West Pittston Presbyterian Church.

Ten men were in the elevator cage only 20 feet from the bottom of the 280-foot shaft when three cars of coal weighing 11 tons crashed down on them. Only one man survived.

“The big question everyone wanted answered was how could this happen,” Wolensky said. He said the three loaded cars and three unloaded cars were being pushed from the Red Ash shaft, located near what is now Red Ash Lane in Exeter. Cars were supposed to be pulled by a locomotive, Hastie said, but were instead moved by being pushed and allowed to roll the rest of the way, a practice known as drifting.

Drifting was officially against policy, but tolerated because it was faster and less work, he said. “Safety was expensive,” he noted.

The “trip” of cars was supposed to roll to the Exeter breaker, located behind the shaft, but a switch in the tracks was in the wrong position. A new worker’s attempts to “sprag,” or stop the wheels, the cars with a piece of wood was in vain and the three loaded cars plummeted down the shaft and crashed into the descending elevator, Wolensky and Hastie said.

“How anyone in that cage survived I couldn’t even guess. It must have been a miracle,” said Hastie. The engineer and his assistant, who was responsible for checking the switch, were arraigned on negligence charges, but the men said their research has yet to turn up the results of those charges.

Some in attendance expressed surprise that there were no lawsuits and no charges of negligence against the coal company. But, that wasn’t the way things were in those days, even when houses sank because of a “squeeze” — when the surface collapsed over a heavily mined area, Wolensky said. Hastie noted that at one point seven homes on Delaware Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets sank. The evidence still indicates that there are two steps to the front porch and eight or nine to the back porch where the back of the house was jacked up after subsidence, he said.

Joe Pazitta, who worked in the Red Ash mine, offered a few insights of his own. “There were safety barricades that should have stopped the cars that they must not have had up,” he said. Pazitta said people need to remember disasters like the one in Exeter.

“It’s important, but people forget and don’t care. They should remember we all had relatives that worked in the mines but a lot of people forget about the past.”

Wolensky, who is on a sabbatical from his position with the University of Wisconsin to research his latest book, said it’s important to remember local heritage. “We have an incredibly rich history — the industrial revolution, the immigration saga, and anthracite coal was one of the first corporate enterprises,” he said. “We really have a lot to celebrate, commemorate and remember.”

Carl Orechovsky, president of the Old Forge Coal Mine Web site, said he was pleased with the turnout. “This is history, heritage. A lot of people today don’t know what the miners went through. What they did started everything around here.”

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