CHERRYVILLE YOUTH BURIED IN RUSH OF COAL AND WATER AT KEFFERS ON TUESDAY
BODY NOT YET RECOVERED
The body of Lester Lengel, 24, of Cherryville, carried down a mine slope on Keffer’s Mountain, by a rush of water Tuesday afternoon, had not been recovered yesterday.
Because of the danger to the lives of rescue workers orders were issued by a mine inspector that no one be allowed in the shaft until it was timbered. Work was begun timbering the slope and as soon as it is completed, grappling will be renewed for the body.
Work was halted at 9 o’clock on Tuesday night after seven hours’ use of grappling hooks had proved futile.
Wednesday morning safety engineers of the P. & R. C. & I. Company, on whose land the mine is located, installed pumps by which it is hoped to clear the slope of water sufficiently to recover the body.
Three buddies working with Lengel narrowly escaped with their lives when the rush of water came.
They were his brother, Norman Lengel, 20, and Claude Raudenbush, both of Cherryville, and Samuel Snyder, 18 of Pine Grove.
The survivors said they were driving a heading toward old workings in the abandoned East Franklin Colliery. Knowing they would encounter water they had kept a safety hole drilled ahead of the, but the water broke through with only a few seconds warning.
Norman Lengel and Raudenbush were near the bottom of the slope and ran up the pitch to safety. Young Snyder was trapped some distance from the bottom but managed to save himself from being washed away by clinging to a piece of timber.
Norman Lengel at the risk of his own life returned to the mine and creeping from one set of timber to another managed to bring Snyder to safety.
Lester Lengel was washed away by the water. His body may be in old workings hundreds of feet from where he was trapped.
The scene of the accident is only about 75 years off the main highway near the Harper Brown Service Station at the crest of Keffer Mountain between Keffers and Joliett. The top of the slope which is 200 feet deep, can be seen from the highway.
It is near the spot where several years ago a Keffers miner met death in a similar manner and whose body was not recovered until days later and then only after a diver from the Philadelphia Naval Yard had been brought to Keffers.
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The above article appeared in a local newspaper in 1938 at the time of the accident.
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