The front page of the Evening Herald, Pottsville, March 2, 1977, reporting on the mining disaster at the Porter Tunnel, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, which occurred on March 1, 1977. Articles from that edition of the newspaper follow here:
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2ND BODY FOUND IN MINE
TOWER CITY, Pennsylvania (UPI) — Rescue workers Wednesday blasted away a log jam and found the body of another miner killed when water swept through Kocher Coal Company’s Porter Tunnel, but continued their search for eight other missing men.
Samuel Klinger, foreman in charge of the rescue effort, informed Mrs. Philip Sabatino of Hegins that her 50-year old husband’s body was removed from the mine. She and her mother wept in one another’s arms.
“Mr. Sabatino’s body was sighted at 9 a.m., and positive identification was made at 11 a.m.,” Klinger said. “He was found about 150 feet down the gangway from the main tunnel.”
According to Klinger, the other miners who were trapped were working at least 1,000 feet down the gangway when tons of water burst through a coal face, swamping the mine and filling its passages with debris.
John B. Shutack, district manager of the federal Mines Enforcement Safety Administration, said state and federal officials were still optimistic that the other miners are alive.
“We are still hopeful,” he said.
The trapped miner were identified as Ronald Adley, 37, Tower City; Timothy Grose, 19, and John Moyer, both of Ashland; Dennis Morgan, 30, and Ronald Herb, 32, both of Valley View; Mark Kroh, 38, Good Spring; Ralph Renninger, 40, Donaldson; Philip Sabatino, 50, Hegins, and Donald Schoffler, 41, Gordon.
The three men admitted to the intensive care unit of the Pottsville Hospital, Harry Fishburn, John Morgan, and Ernest Morgan, were reported in guarded condition, but “holding their own.”
Shutack said, “time is in our favor because there is plenty of fresh air and no buildup of noxious gases.”
Asked if he would be surprised if the men were found alive, Shutack said, “No, I wouldn’t. I’d be be very happy.”
Rescue workers shouted and banged on the side of the mine tunnel when they broke through but there was no response from the trapped men.
One miner, Gary Clinger, 19, of Hegins, was killed, three others were injured and at least nine were reported missing after the water burst through a tunnel wall and rolled 5,000 feet through the main channel of the mine located on Brookside Mountain.
The wives, children, friends and relatives of the missing miners kept a vigil in a dingy locker room outside the portal of the mine, awaiting word on the trapped miners.
Miners and rescue workers slogged through knee-deep water and mud, removing timbers and other debris that was knocked loose by the force of the water. Most of the water drained from the mine by late Tuesday.
The anthracite coal in the Porter Tunnel is mined vertically in shafts called breasts. State mining officials said the men may have survived if they were able to climb ladders up the shafts when the water swept through the tunnel.
“I don’t know what their chances are, but our hope is that they were able to climb up the ladders to high ground when the mine flooded,” said Walter Vincinelli, Pennsylvania’s chief deep mine safety officer.
The source of the water is not known, had one Kocher Coal official speculated the burst may have come from an abandoned mine near the Porter Tunnel.
The first rescue attempt failed Tuesday night. Teams working from either side of the shaft were unable to break through the tons of mine timbers swept into piles that blocked the 10-foot high main channel of the mine.
“The water came through with a tremendous force. Those timbers came a whistling,” Vincenelli said.
Using mine air shafts, the first rescue tea got within 200 feet of the area,
“You just can’t see a thing in there,” said James Laird, a regional official of the Federal Mine Enforcement Safety Administration. “We’ve got to get an access route in there to see if we can find the men.”
The second rescue attempt involved another assault on the debris in the main channel, along with an attempt to clear secondary channels called monkeys. The teams hoped to dig down to the trapped miners from the monkey channels.
About 100 miners were working some 5,000 feet from the entrance of the mine, which is located about a mile from this small hard coal region town in Schuylkill County [Tower City], when the disaster hit.
Most escaped through an emergency tunnel.
A disaster unit was set up at Pottsville General Hospital, where the three injured miners were treated for severe abrasions, shock and exposure and admitted.
They were John Morgan, 33, Tower City; Ernest Morgan, 49, Valley View; and Harry Fishburn Jr., 25, Mt. Carmel.
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MOST PAINFUL VIGIL
TOWER CITY, Pennsylvania (UPI) — Gloria Shoffler has lived with vigils all her life. Her father and brothers worked in the mines, and he husband digs for the anthracite hidden deep in the heart of Brookside Mountain, too.
She knows what it is to dread those agonizing minutes when her husband, Donald Shoffler, 41, of Gordon, is late coming home from work. She and her five children hope it is the traffic and they pray it’s not trouble at the mine.
Mrs. Shoffler began the most peaceful vigil of her life at about 7 p.m. Tuesday, when she first heard about the disaster down in Porter Tunnel of Kocher Coal Company’s mine, which runs deep into the side of the mountain.
Tons of water broke through a coal face 5,000 feet inside of the main tunnel of the mine. Her 41-year old husband and eight other men are missing. Another miner is dead. Three more are seriously injured.
They hold their vigil in a dingy depressing locker room near the portal of the mine.
The black coal dust covers the overalls hanging from the hooks on the walls of the room, a reminder that this is the place their husbands prepared for work, and scrubbed away the coal dust before coming home for dinner.
Every few minutes someone walks out into the cold, stark night — perhaps to look at the way a lonely winter moon marks the barren trees against the mountainside or to watch the workers drag the soggy teams and debris from the mine.
Then they return to the warmth of the room, where they face the reporters.
“We were talking just the other day about the safety of the mine and that it seemed like a good place to work,” Mrs. Shoffler said her hands trembling as she fought off an attack of nerves that seemed to overwhelm her.
“I’ve thought about the danger in the mine a lot of times, especially when he would be a little late coming home from work. He’s worked in the mines for 15 years.”
Patty Moyers knows that feeling of dread too — even though she is only 19 and has not seen the years of coal dust and worry that became an integral part of Mrs. Shoffler’s life.
Her father, Donald Moyer of Ashland, is also trapped in the mine.
“My father could have retired but he just kept going back into the mines,” she said through her tears. “He crushed his ribs in the mine just the other day, and he just keeps going back.”
The Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers are there to provide sandwiches and hot coffee and comfort.
But for most of the families, it is a cold, lonely and frightening night to wait, to hope, and to pray.
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100 MEN AT WORK WHEN FLOOD HITS
By Ruth Ann Humpf
Over 100 men were working in the Porter Tunnel Mine, Tower City when a sudden gush of impounded water from an unknown source flooded the work site. Of the approximately 110 men in the mine at the time, one man, Gary Klinger, age 26, Hegins RD 1, was killed, five hospitalized at Pottsville and nine are still unaccounted for, trapped 600 feet below the mountain trapped beyond the debris which is hampering the efforts of the rescue workers.
According to Leon Richter, vice president of Kocher Coal Company, the accident was totally unexpected. Great safety measures are taken at all times. Drilling for water 35 feet in from the face of the vein is standard procedure even though the state only requires 20 feet. This is done in case water is encountered, it will not gush out.
Richter also told reporters that the men were trapped by debris 5,000 feet from the mine portal. At 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon, rescue workers were digging at 3,000 feet from the portal. Loads of debris (dirt and lumber) were brought out at different intervals by the 15 to 20 rescue workers were all employees at Porter. Richter said that the tunnel is approximately 18 feet wide by 10 feet high. At the time the water was about three feet deep. The men who did get out, came out on their own power, some through emergency exits.
Women, children, brothers and other relatives gathered around the mine entrance, about 200 feet away. Pain, disbelief, and shock etched their faces. This was approximately 4:30 p.m. Later in the evening, when the men still hadn’t been reached, families were given shelter in nearby offices and served food and coffee by the Red Cross and Salvation Army.
A few hours after the accident people were coming to the offices, inquiring about relatives and tears could be seen trickling down faces when no definite progress could be given them.
About midnight, Walter Vincinelli, commissioner of mine safety, Department of Environmental Resources, gave a brief news conference and said that at the rescue workers were within 600 feet of the men on the same level and 400 feet above the men in a vertical direction, but were still hampered by the great amount of debris. He said that no contact had been made with anyone entombed.
A man whose brother is one of the trapped miners asked Mr. Vincinelli if the men were soaked and not moving, what their chance of survival would be. Mr. Vincinelli told him it depended on the temperature which he figured to be about 50 degrees. He felt at the time that exposure problem was not as great as the time it would take to remove the debris.
Vincinelli said two state and two federal inspectors were in the mine along with 39 rescue workers.
The mine was started in 1948 and worked until 1953 by the Reading Coal Company, when it was shut down. It was rehabilitated in 1968 by the Kocher Coal Company.
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AIR OF PESSIMISM AMONG SOME CONTEMPLATING FATE OF MINERS
By Carol Kline
Two are dead and the fate of eight other miners still trapped inside the Porter Tunnel of the Kocher Coal Mining Company near Tower City is unknown as rescue operations at the site turn into a waiting game for relatives and friends keeping vigil in the back room of one of the buildings at the site.
Gary Klinger, 19 years old, from Hegins, is the only known fatality, but according to officials on the scene the outlook of finding the others alive look grim.
Steve Shrawder, assistant to the president of the coal firm (Robert Rissinger) gave this account of the mishap to news teams on-the-scene: “As far as I can determine, somewhere just prior to 12 o’clock the man inside the office here got a phone call from inside (the mine). We have power of communications from the inside and the conversation was very brief. The man indicated there was a water problem, and that was it. He was gone. This man here (the clerk in the office) tried to call him back but he evidently had left that position.
“The next thing that happened was three men came out the secondary outlet (a different location emergency outlet) and we knew we had a problem. Evidently, some rumors out earlier that there was an explosion but that’s false. The working area where the men were is about 5,000 feet from the opening of the tunnel. Water was pouring out of the tunnel at a pretty good rate at the entrance of the tunnel.
Asked if there is any way to tell if the men are still alive, Shrawder answered, “There’s no way to tell. We don’t know where the water came from.” How many men were working in the mine at the time of the mishap, “I don’t know that either,” he replied.
Shrawder stated, “The men are working their way in this way (through entrance of the tunnel) and some other people coming in the other way. I don’t think its flooded but there’s a lot of debris in there.” The debris was washed inside the tunnel from old workings. He added that there has been n contact with any of the men still trapped.
The mine usually works two shifts and no estimate could be given as to how many men work on each shift. The shifts usually start at 6 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Ambulances were waiting at the entrance to the tunnel to transport the victims to the Hospital.
Kenneth Herring, 20, of Pine Grove, has been emplo9yed at the mine for two years, was scheduled to work day shift and would have been inside where the men were trapped but he overslept.
Herring observed, “I’m just lucky I guess.” Asked if he is considering getting out of the mines, he said he doesn’t know but that e will probably “stick it out here.” He is married and has a son.
Asked what he thinks about the disaster, he stated, “It’s a shame. It’s too late now really.” His job consists of running a motor to haul coal out. He was at the scene and volunteered to go inside with the next rescue team.
Walter Kraska, president of District 25 of the United Mine Workers, made a trip to the disaster side with Louis Guisti, safety inspector, to offer assistance on behalf of the UMWA. The Kocher firm is a non-union company.
According to Kraska, “I just feel that first of all we must lay everything aside because there is human life involved and the UMW will give them any kind of assistance they need.”
Robert Adley of Lebanon arrived shortly before 8 p.m. with his mother Buela Adley to find out about his brother Ronald Adley, 36. They were aware that he worked for company but not aware that he was one of the miners trapped.
Adley said his elderly mother was waiting in the family car along the dirt coal road. As he approached the car, he hated to tell his mother the news that her son is one of the men trapped. Her face whitened even before she received the news.
Arley said that his brother had quit working at the mine a while ago but for some reason came back. He said his brother and wife, Anna Mae Adley, are married about ten years and have two children.
Mrs. Adley said, “I hope to God he’s safe, I hope he can get out. I hope to God they get out.” Shaken, she was, escorted down the dirt mountain road to wait with the rest of the families.
Jacob Weaver, 90, owner of a service station along Route 209 near the mine, recalled another disaster at the East Brookside Coal Company that took 21 lives on August 2, 1913. He said he worked as a blacksmith for the firm in those days and put in 13 hour shifts. On one particular day he was told by the boss that he would have to drill holes in the tunnel, which meant it would take him seven hours in addition to his 13 hour shift. He refused the job and was fired. He said just two weeks later an explosion killed 21 men including the man who took his job as a blacksmith.
State Police, local police and CREST were at the scene to keep the crowds away from the tunnel entrance where volunteers were busy hauling out mining cars filled with debris blocking the tunnel. CREST was busy setting up auxiliary lighting.
It’s been a while since a mining disaster like this struck the anthracite region. The news spread quickly and brought news teams from all over the state, as well as television networks.
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From Newspapers.com.
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