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By STEPHEN R. LEVINE slevine@leader.net
Monday, January 24, 2000 Page: 3A
Long before the Susquehanna’s cold, dark waters penetrated a crust of earth
and buried John Baloga 41 years ago, he knew the mines would kill him, family
members said.
“I used to hear him say that he didn’t know if he’d come out,” recalled
Baloga’s daughter, Audrey Calvey. “The day before he said `the river’s high.
If it ever came in we’d be drowned like rats.’ ”
Baloga was one of a dozen workers killed in the Knox Mine disaster on Jan.
22, 1959. Members of the Knox Mine disaster memorial committee held a service
on Sunday to remember the men who died.
Calvey and her brother, Donald Baloga, attended the Memorial Mass at St.
Joseph’s Church in Port Griffith, Jenkins Township, to honor their father and
the other Knox mine victims.
Donald Baloga said he was in the garage changing a car headlight when the
catastrophe happened. His mother came screaming toward him, “the river broke
in.”
Rushing to the scene a block or two away, Baloga said he came upon one of
the mine’s owners.
“He said, `My mine, I’m ruined.’ He’s worried about the mine; we’re
worried about the men,” Baloga said.
Eighty-one men were in the mine that day. Of the 69 who survived, 35 were
rescued from flooded mines. A dozen lost their lives; their bodies were never
recovered.
Donald Baloga believes the Knox Coal Company, which was leasing the mines
from the Pennsylvania Coal Company, was pushing workers far beyond where they
should be as they dug deeper and deeper beneath the Susquehanna River.
Former Pennsylvania Coal Co. surveyor Joe Stella, who attended Sunday’s
service, said he carefully mapped where workers should be and where they
shouldn’t. Still, he said, “illegal mining was done in between inspections
… They were 80 to 90 feet beyond the red line (when the mine caved in).”
Stella said some Knox executives were charged in the aftermath – seven with
involuntary manslaughter, three also were charged with conspiracy.
The few convictions however, were overturned on appeal.
Of his former bosses, Stella said: “They wouldn’t take any
responsibility.”< Calvey said that galled her.
“To this day, not one of those owners has come to the family and said
we’re sorry,” she said.
After the disaster, reports of court proceedings that questioned mine
ownership and safety saturated newspapers. The trials revealed that only 19
inches of rock separated the mine from the Susquehanna River where it broke
through.
After Sunday’s service, a wreath was placed on a memorial outside the
church that marks the disaster. Inscribed in the granite are the names of the
lost miners: Frank Orlowski, William Sinclair, Francis Burns, Dominick
Kovaleski, John Baloga, Daniel Stefanaitis, Herman Zelonis, Sam Altieri,
Benjamin Boyar, Joseph Gizenski, Eugene Ostrowski and Charles Featherman.
Call Levine at 831-7305.