The front page of the Evening Herald, Pottsville, March 7, 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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HOPE RAPIDLY FADING FOR FIVE STILL MISSING
TOWER CITY, Pennsylvania (UPI) — There are five miners trapped deep in Kocher Coal Company’s Porter Tunnel and only time will tell whether lonely Brookside Mountain will be the marker for their graves.
State and federal officials plugged away at the rescue attempt Sunday but the effort was bogged down by technical problems with a drilling rig and tons of debris in the shafts of the anthracite mine.
Richard Adley, 37, of Tower City, walked to freedom under Bright sunshine Sunday morning after spending 116 hours down in the mine where he was trapped in a massive water breakout Tuesday. Bone-hard coal had slowed the rescue teams that eventually freed him.
Adley was taken to Pottsville General Hospital where he was reported in good condition despite cuts and bruises. He was to undergo three days of observation in the intensive care unit.
But the jubilation over his rescue quickly turned to dismay when a mining team found the bodies of two more victims only 50 feet from the small pocket in the mine where Adley was found. The death toll rose to four.
“Chances are dim. I have to be honest with you,” said John Shutuck, federal mine safety official, as he talked about the other five. “I have to be honest with you, but we’re not giving up hope.”
Adley told his rescuers he rode a wall of water to safety but two miners working along side him were swept away according to John Shutack, a federal mine safety official.
The first day when we taped into Adley he told us that the three of them were swept away by the water and that he was able to jump to safety, but for some reason the other men didn’t make it.
“The water swept them up the shaft and they tried to jump onto the ladders on the side of the shaft. Adley made it.” Shutack said.
He said Adley’s rescuers didn’t ask the miner to explore the area where he was trapped to try to locate the other two men, because we didn’t want him to get in a hysterical state.
Shuttack said officials intentionally limited the cord on Adley’s miner’s lamp to keep him from exploring too far.
The body of Ralph Renninger, 40. Donaldson, was removed Sunday afternoon. Donald Shoffler‘s body was found almost six days to the minute after his wife Gloria Shoffler began her lonely vigil outside of the portal. He was 41.
Efforts to extricate Shoffler’s body from the mine were hampered by treacherous conditions that forced the mining team to shore up the roof because of falling rocks and coal.
After Adley’s rescue, three dynamite blasts were set off to denote the miner’s distress signal in hopes of evoking a response from any of the five men still unaccounted for. However, seismographic instruments failed to pick up any response.
Seismic devices set up on the side of the mountain failed to record the tap-tap-tap that would indicate any additional survivors. However, a computer was being used to study the recordings the devices made.
“These are sensitive pieces of equipment and it will take quite a while to compute the results,” said Jack Tisdale, another federal mining official. “It will take some time before we are able to get readouts.”
A feeling of depression seemed to permeate the area around the mine. Some families maintained their vigils, but others went to the warmth of their homes to await word on their loved ones trapped deep in the mountain.
“Daddy, Daddy, oh no,” cried a teenage girl when the body of Shoffler was being taken out. She was led to an ambulance to sit inside and continued to cry.
Shoffler, a veteran of the Korean War, leaves his widow and five children. His funeral will be Wednesday from the Kull Parlor in Ashland. For the widow, it was just another in a string of recent tragedies. Her father. Elmer Miller, died two months ago, and her sister Bonnie Miller, a teenager was fatally shot in an accident several years ago. Mrs. Shoffler’s brother, Leo Miller, was one of the miners who escaped the Porter Tunnel flood last week.
Renninger leaves a widow and four daughters.
When the rescuers broke through the end of the 50-foot tunnel to free Adley, he told them, “Pass the pick-hammer over to me,” and he proceeded to put the finishing touches on the escape tunnel that had taken the men 108 hours to dig.
Adley turned down an offer to ride in a stretcher for the mile to the mouth of the tunnel, declaring, “Hell, no. I want to walk. He also turned down an offer of sunglasses to diminish the daylight glare.
“He’s mentally alert and in good shape,” said a spokesman at Pottsville Hospital, where he was admitted for observation. “He has some small abrasions on his forehead, legs and arms.”
“They found my daddy. He’s alive!” shouted his 11-year old daughter Justina Adley. “It’s a miracle from God,” said his sister-in-law, Kate Adley. His wife Anna Mae Adley hugged him all the way to the hospital. He sat up and they were hugging and kissing one another reported ambulance attendant Robert Zerbe.
When Adley entered to ambulance he was afraid of getting it dirty. “I told him, don’t let it worry you,” said Zerbe.
One of the first things Adley asked for when a life sustaining pipe was driven through to him last Wednesday was a shot of whiskey. However, they sent him orange juice instead. When a nurse at Pottsville Hospital offered him orange juice on Sunday, he replied, “No thanks. I had loads of that.”
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MRS. ADLEY THANKS THE LORD
LONG VIGIL ENDS HAPPILY FOR 71-YEAR-OLD MOTHER
TOWER CITY, Pennsylvania (UPI) — Mud and cold were her companions but the thoughts of Ronald Adley‘s 71-year-old mother were with her son early Sunday as rescuers chipped through the remaining barrier of coal that imprisoned him.
Buela Adley wore no books to guard her against the thick black mud at the entrance of Kocher Coal Company’s Porter Tunnel. A babuska was wrapped around her gray hair.
A compassionate official urged her to take shelter in a trailer where she continued her vigil for her 37-year-old son.
Her long wait ended in the bright, warm sun of a Sunday morning.
“Thank the Lord, thank the Lord,” Adley’s mother said when she was notified her son had walked from the mine and was on his way by ambulance to Pottsville Hospital. It was 8:35 a.m. EDT.
The Adley family has been waiting since Wednesday, when the rescuers first heard Ronald Adley‘s tap-tap-tap that told them someone was alive deep in the bowels of the mountain.
Katie Adley, the trapped miner’s sister-in-law, held her ground against hordes of reporters and camera crews throughout the week, breaking her silence only to say she was praying her brother-in-law would come out alive.
Katie kept breaking into tears, wiping them away and saying, “I just hope and pray that the others are going to be all right.”
She didn’t know her brother-in-law was rescued. She got the word from a friendly newsman, who shouted to her, “Katie, he’s out.”
She put both hands to her face then ran off to tell her mother-in-law.
Adley’s 32-year-olf wife Anna Mae Adley also didn’t get to see her husband leave the mine. She was stationed at a point away from the action to screen her from the reporters and camera crews.
The couple embraced later at Pottsville Hospital.
“Thank God he’s alive,” she saif.
Adley’s children, Justina Adley, 11, and Ronald Adley Jr., 8, waited at home for word of their father.
Robert Adley, the miner’s brother, watched passively throughout the week. His children kept asking to sit on his shoulders.
He had an advantage over other family members, at 6-3 he had no trouble seeing over the crowd toward the floodlit tunnel about 200 feet away.
After he learned his brother was free, reporters asked him whether he thought his brother would go back into the mines.
“It’s hard to say what he’s going to do,” the brother said. “He enjoys life, he lives his life to the fullest.”
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GENERATIONS OF MINERS WILL REMEMBER THE ’77 PORTER TUNNEL
As sure as they sing songs about the price they pay to dig coal, they will talk about the day a wall of water swept like a freight train through the veins of Kocher Coal Company’s Porter Tunnel on Brookside Mountain.
It killed at least four miners, seriously injured three others and trapped five more.
Gary Lee Klinger of Hegins started out working in the mines with his father, but they decided it would be best not to work in the same pits. Mining accidents had wipes out family breadwinners before.
At noon Tuesday, Klinger, the only child, was three weeks away from his 20th birthday as he worked in the belly of Brookside mountain.
His job was to shovel the coal into a conveyor after it had been pried loose by the miners working in the chute above.
Another miner, Joe Narcavage, said he hears and felt a tremendous rush of air and knew there was trouble.
“I turned and looked into the gangway and all I saw was a wall of water coming at me,” Narcavage said.
“It was infinitely frightening. I have never been so terrified in my life. I screamed, ‘Water,’ to warn the others then I dove into a chute.”
Klinger’s body and that of another miner Philip Sabatino, 50, were carried from the mines in the 24 hours following the incident. More bodies were discovered on Sunday.
Klinger was buried on the side of a hill about 20 miles away from the disaster, in Mabel, Pennsylvania. Rainy winter skies were the backdrop for Klinger’s requiem.
“We are merely creatures of time and each of us is heading for eternity,” the preacher said at Klinger’s funeral.
“Please remember the families of the others who are involved in this tragedy and families of those who wait in suspense for their comrades still in the mine.
Meanwhile, rescuers searching for possible survivors in the disaster hears a sound through their listening devices.
“Tap, tap, tap.”
There was no mistaking it. It couldn’t have been the wrenched and twisted timbers creaking or lumps of coal falling in perfect time from a roof to a dry floor. It was a miner desperately signaling for help.
Ronald Adley was sitting on a broken timber in a pocket of the mine probably preparing himself for death when he heard the rattling of the rescue team and began tapping out his signal.
The miners universal SOS saved him. The rescue team bored a thin hole to the pocket where Adley, 37, was trapped. His wife and two children maintained a vigil at the mine. Unlike some other families, their agony was over.
They fed Adley candy bars and vegetable soup and shipped him a plug of chewing tobacco. He asked for “some booze” but that request was denied.
“Adley is a tough guy,” said one relieved Kocher Coal official. “I understand he is a karate buff. He’s probably in there busing coal with karate chops.”
The rescuers cut a 4-foot by 4-foot tunnel through rock hard anthracite coal to free Adley, the rattle of the drill and thump of miners’ picks against the hard coal were the music of life. He walked from the mine Sunday morning.
“We’re going to drill an eight-inch hole down into the chute and then lower a television camera and microphone and loud speaker and see if we can find any signs of life,” said Jack Tisdale, a federal mine safety official.
When the sun broke over Brookside Mountain Sunday morning, seven men were still missing. But rescuers crawling through narrow passageways found two more bodies.
Sensitive listening devices set up on the slopes of the mountain have not registered any sign of life. That worried the rescue teams, but did not deter them.
The families of the trapped miners kept their quiet vigil in the dingy locker room outside the mine portal. By the third day, their agony was hidden behind masks of fatigue and anticipation.
The officials tried to be optimistic, but the signs were not good.
One miner who was part of the rescue effort thought the teams should have hear from the tapped miners early in the disaster.
“They have been in there since noon Tuesday and we’re not hearing from them. I’m worried.”
But Walter J. Vincinelli, Pennsylvania’s chief deep mine safety officer, said he would not give up hope.
“We have come up with one survivor here and that put hope in everyone,” he said. “I never give up hope until the last one is accounted for.”
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From Newspapers.com.
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