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First Posted: 1/19/2009
By Tom Mooney tmooney2@ptd.netColumnist
The cause of the Knox Mine Disaster, historians and analysts agree, was that the Knox Coal Co., which leased the River Slope mine from property owner Pennsylvania Coal Co., dug shafts farther out under the Susquehanna River bottom than it was supposed to.
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The shafts were then extended upward and connected at a point where only a dangerously thin layer of rock and earth separated the shafts from the river above.
“The breakthrough was the result of reckless mining in the Pittston Vein, directly under the Susquehanna River, which was ice-laden and was rising at the time of the disaster due to an unseasonable thaw,” wrote George Spohrer in the text of a 1969 address to the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society.
Remarkably, all but 12 of the 81 men who reported for work that day escaped as millions of gallons of frigid water and debris flooded the mines.
Four separate bodies investigated the disaster: the state Legislature’s Joint Committee to Investigate the Knox Mine Disaster, the Commission of State Mine Inspectors, the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines and a federal anti-crime body known as the Special Group, formed to investigate organized crime.
Criminal prosecutions, however, met only modest success, with no persons or organizations ever being found guilty of actually causing the disaster. Some of the guilty verdicts that were achieved were overturned on appeal.
“The seven persons eventually convicted for wrongdoing in the Knox case … were apprehended on labor law or income tax violations. Their penalties, moreover, were relatively light,” wrote Robert P. Wolensky, in his 1999 book “The Knox Mine Disaster.”
The best-known figure found guilty of anything was August J. Lippi, president of District 1 of the United Mine Workers of America and president of the Exeter National Bank. Discovered to have been simultaneously a union leader and co-owner of the Knox Mine – a clear conflict of interest, according to Wolensky – Lippi served 41 months prison time on conviction for income tax evasion and bank fraud. His union district was eventually placed in federal trusteeship.
Wolensky places blame for the disaster on the contract mining system, by which large coal companies that owned the land and the mines farmed out actual mining to smaller companies and then bought coal from them.
Spohrer gives a long list of questionable decisions, including safety recommendations being ignored in Knox’s pursuit of coal. “It is almost incredible that experienced mining men could authorize mining in that area,” he writes of the River Slope.
Still, much of the Knox disaster is a story of human beings at their best, behaving with heroism and self-sacrifice in a desperate situation.
Wrote Spohrer, “Only the presence of older mine workers who were familiar with long worked-out passage ways leading to alternate entrances saved the disaster from becoming of much greater proportion.”
The descendants remember the brave miners too.
To Maureen Handley Sabestinas, Frank Handley Sr.’s actions on Jan. 22, 1959, were fully in character for a man who left school at 14 to help take care of his family when his father died of the flu.
Handley, a foreman, took charge in his area and led 12 men through the darkness to the Hoyt Shaft, where they were lifted to safety.
“Everything he did was the right thing to do. He loved his men like brothers,” his daughter said.
He never returned to the mines, dying in 2003, just short of his 99th birthday.
Amedeo “Paul” Pancotti, whose barefoot climb up the abandoned Eagle Shaft eventually earned him the Carnegie Medal for Heroism, was credited with saving the lives of 33 miners.
Pancotti worked at the Emanon Country Club after his experience at Knox. Whenever someone would mention Knox he would say, according to his daughter Hortense Oschal, “That’s over, it’s all right.”
COMMEMORATIVE EVENTS
Tuesday: 7 p.m., video documentary followed by discussion. Earth Conservancy, 101 S. Main St., Ashley.
Through Thursday: Display and video presentation for groups of 8 or more. Call 654-6209 or 357-9564 to reserve.
Thursday: 10 a.m.-1 p.m., display and video presentation; 11:20, candle-lighting and blessing ceremony. Overlook Professional Center, 200 Overlook Drive, Pittston.
