No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster

Good Night, Dad

Good Night, Dad Emilio Megna had one more shift to work in the Consolidation Coal Company No.9 mine before he would retire and open his own service station in Worthington, West Virginia. Just eight more hours, 600 feet underground inside the cold and dark tunnels, then he would no longer have to breathe coal dust or scrub it from his face and clothes each day. No longer would he have to worry about methane gas explosions or roof falls that could bury him alive. Instead, he would wake with the morning sun and work in the midday light, pumping gas and fixing his neighbors’ cars and trucks. Best of all, he could pass the business on to his son. Emilio would become the last person in his family who had to mine coal. He was still young, only 48, with a lot of life left to live.1 As a young boy, Emilio had followed his father into the coal mines of West Virginia, picking up chunks of coal and doing odd jobs. He had come to America from Italy in 1923, when he was a three-year-old, wearing a skirt and an earring. His family was one of thousands who crossed the Atlantic Ocean hoping to earn a good living in the coalfields. When he turned 16, Emilio took a permanent job underground, earning 50 cents a day. More than 30 years later, he was ready to come out of the mines. The day before the No.9 exploded, Emilio’s 16-year-old son, Joe, tried to convince his father to play hooky and go trout fishing. But Emilio would not do it, said he owed it to the company to work his last shift. That evening, Emilio took Joe to his best friend’s house for a sleepover. The two boys 1 6 CHAPTER 1 planned to go to school and then spruce up the gas station for the grand opening that Saturday. Joe tried again to convince his father to stay home. “No, I love you. You be careful. Don’t get in trouble,” Emilio said. He then drove away in their Dodge Dart station wagon. It was the first time Joe could remember hearing his father say he loved him. Emilio Megna went home, gathered his lunch box and reported for work with 98 other men who went underground at midnight. Unlike thirdshift workers in other industries, No.9 miners did not call it the “graveyard shift.” They dubbed it the “cateye” shift. On November 20, 1968, as he had done hundreds of times, Emilio entered the mine through the Llewellyn Run portal, located in the hollow for which it was named. He rode a large elevator to the floor of the mine, where he boarded a passenger rail car, called a “jeep.” The electrically-powered vehicle carried him more than a mile to section 9North on the far west side of the mine. A section foreman, Emilio likely checked his work area for methane gas and any other dangerous conditions. Earlier that week, he had found gas in his section, but his written reports indicate it had not accumulated to hazardous levels. Some of the machinery in the section was not working properly that morning. At some point, the dispatcher sent Emilio and his crew to another part of the mine. As Emilio worked, his son Joe slept, until the phone call came, the call that no mining family wants to answer. The first words are as devastating as the sight of a black sedan pulling into a military family’s driveway:“The No.9 blew up.” “Joe, which mine does your father work in?” his friend’s mother called upstairs. “The No.9,” he answered. Joe jumped out of bed, put on his pants and shoes and ran bare-chested two miles through the wintery woods to get home. One of his sisters was fixing her hair for work. He told her the news. His mother came in, and they turned on the television. It was true. The TV screen was filled with images of smoke pouring from the mouth of the mine. GOOD NIGHT, DAD 7 They climbed into their car and drove toward the mine.At a roadblock, they were rerouted to the mine’s company store, where people already had begun to gather. They waited and waited and waited, participants in a morbid ritual that had...