Schooley shaft mine blast remembered

By Sheena Delazio sdelazio@timesleader.comStaff Writer

EXETER – Sunday was a historic day for many football fans hoping their team would go to the Super Bowl.

But, for Bob Wolensky, it was a day to remember what some call the second Knox Mine disaster – even though it happened years before what is now called the Knox Mine Disaster.

Wolensky, a local coal-mining historian, spoke Sunday about the 1947 Schooley shaft mine disaster at a presentation sponsored by the Exeter Historical Society.

On April 10 of that year, at around 7 a.m., 18 miners entered the Schooley shaft, near Mason Street, when an explosion occurred.

Ten miners were killed, while eight others were injured in the blast.

“The mine has a million ways to kill a person,” Wolensky said, telling a crowd of nearly 30 that approximately 35,000 local men have died in the mines in the past 150 years.

He said a spark set off methane gas that had collected near the foot of the shaft.

Wolensky said a survivor described to him a “gruesome” explosion, in which the men’s bodies were “vulcanized” and intertwined, and all but roasted.

“It could have been prevented,” he said.

That’s where historian and long-time miner Bill Hastie came into play.

Hastie, who worked in the Schooley shaft for a number of years after the explosion, explained that the blast was caused by a spark from a wrench just near the foot of the shaft.

At the time, Hastie said, nearly 60,000 cubic feet of fresh air was pumped into the mine to ensure methane gas would not collect on the coal.

Some say, Hastie said, that an air shaft was clogged by debris and that a door connecting the Schooley shaft to the Hoyt shaft under the Susquehanna River was left closed, which prevented the airflow and caused the collection of methane gas.

Hastie said a miners oil lamp or the fire boss, who went into the mine first to check for methane gas, if he properly did his job, could have alerted the miners to the methane gas.

Jim Bussacco, of Pittston, and a longtime coal miner, attended Sunday’s presentation, eager to talk about his book, “A History of Pittston’s Coal Mining Era.”

John Panzitta, of West Pittston, whose grandfather’s cousin died in the Schooley explosion, attended to hear the history of the event.

“I’m really proud of the miners and coal history,” said Lisa Lewis, a local public speaker and re-enactor of the Victorian era.

“It’s beyond comprehension what those men did for us.”

Schooley victims

The following is a list of local men who died in the 1947 accident:

Joseph Tomaszewski, Minooka; Charles Ellard, Minooka; John Castellani, Taylor; Eugene Vivaldi, Duryea; Stephen Allesandra, Yatesville; Michael Giambra, Pittston; Michael Panzitta, Pittston Township; Victor Trotta, Pittston; Joseph Gawlas, Wyoming; and James Jackson, Wyoming, who died from injuries shortly after the incident.