In addition to Germans, Austrians, Hungarians and Italians, several Slovaks from the then Hungarian counties also worked in the mine, specifically from the Gemer-Malohont County, whose capital was Rimavská Sobota, and from the Abov-Turnian County around Košice.
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At that time, the heads of coal mines were usually very cruel to their workers. The miners paid only 50 cents for each coal wagon mined, and in the end they got most of what they paid the miners back through company stores, which was practically the only place where the hit workers could buy.
In order for families to earn anything at all, men and their wives, even with children (including five-year-olds), secretly accompanied men secretly to the mines to help them with cutting, and thus increase family income. Unfortunately, on December 19, 1907, it was this custom that increased the tragic impact of the impending catastrophe. Because of him, Darr Mine has become the grave of entire families in some cases…
Tragic December
The Darr mine was operated by the Pittsburg Coal Company on Jacobs Creek near Rostraver Township in West Westland, Pennsylvania. It was the northeastern part of the United States with the rapid development of heavy industry, which put considerable pressure on the growth of coal mining. Unfortunately, this was accompanied by almost no security measures, which resulted in December 1907 becoming one of the most tragic months in the history of American mining before the Darr mine exploded.
As early as December 1, the Naomi mine in Fayette City exploded in Pennsylvania, leaving 34 miners dead. Nicholas was followed by another disaster in the Monongah mine in West Virginia, which killed as many as 362 miners. And on December 16, just three days before the Darr mine explosion, an explosion occurred at the Yolande mine in Alabama, killing 57 miners.
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All these mining accidents had several things in common. The main reason was the neglect of safety rules. Black dust blasting was carried out in all the mines, despite the fact that coal dust also accumulated in them and that at that time it was already known from England that this dust was highly explosive. All the mines also “gassed” or released methane, and most of them were poorly ventilated.
Unfortunately, this also happened to the miners on Jacobs Creek. The cruel irony is that if they could cut another 12 meters of coal that fateful day, they would get to a new ventilation shaft, which the company dug just to improve the ventilation of the mine. Its construction was promoted shortly before by mine foreman HS Campbell, who had long complained about gassing and poor ventilation in the Darr mine. He even mentioned to his wife that he couldn’t even think about Christmas.
At his urging, the company eventually put a new ventilation shaft into the mine, but it was too late for 239 people. And one of the victims of the disaster was Chief Campbell, who warned him so desperately but in vain.
Explosion underground
The explosion occurred half an hour before noon. The blast immediately killed all the people in the mine, the only miner who survived was lucky because he had moved away from the others shortly before. The number of 239 dead may not be final, because due to the already mentioned unfortunate habit of secret involvement of women and children in work, it has never been known exactly how many people were actually in the mine.
The ministry received a telegram that another mining accident had occurred at the Darr mine around 3 p.m. A team of mining inspectors was immediately sent to the site, where firefighters were already working at the time, to help with rescue work and investigate the causes of the disaster.
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Unfortunately, the scale of the disaster on the spot quickly showed that there will be no one to save. “The explosion was so terrible that it was impossible for anyone to get out of it. Only one miner escaped from inside, who had previously left the face,” one of the inspectors, whose testimony was captured on the website, later said. US mine disasters.
The rescue of the bodies took a long time, because first it was necessary to prevent the risks of further explosions and underground fires, and then it was necessary to carefully remove the floodplains. By December 27, 220 bodies had been found, and the inspectors of the mining company had left the search for the others. Another task now awaits: to determine why the catastrophe occurred.
Mining torches with open fire
It turned out that the day before the catastrophe, on December 18, 1907, the commander of the mining fire brigade fenced off part of the face, prohibiting him from entering the area with an open fire. He justified this by the increased risk of explosion due to the accumulation of coal dust combined on top with escaping methane.
But interrogations of people who had been in contact with the miners before they made their way to the mine confirmed that many men were carrying burnt torches. The conclusion of the investigation was that some of the miners entered the fenced area with a lighted torch and the flame in combination with the explosive mixture in the air did the rest. The investigators thus completely relieved the Pittsburgh Coal Company of responsibility and left the entire blame on the dead.
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However, the survivors of the killed miners did not accept this, who began to point out in outrage that, on the one hand, the mine inspection failed to determine exactly where the explosion actually took place and whether its epicenter was really in the area the fire chief had fenced off that the company did not ban the use of open fire mining lamps even after the firefighter’s warning.
They did not change the verdict on the innocence of society, but at least they achieved a cessation of society for the open fire burners. The disaster, along with previous explosions, also forced the United States government to change mining regulations at the federal level to make underground work safer.
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The Pittsburgh Coal Company resumed operations at the Darr mine in 1910, but never called it Darr again and used it simply as an entrance to the adjacent Banning No. 3 mine. A year before the outbreak of World War I, the mine employed 350 people and was mined that year to 155 thousand tons of coal.
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