No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster

Who Can Stop Us?

Who Can Stop Us? By the end of 1972, recovery workers had reclaimed 31 bodies from the No.9.Widows of miners still entombed were frustrated and weary. Most had begun to believe the coal company officials when they said it was unlikely more bodies could be found. As they had been from the beginning, Consol officials were more interested in coal production than finding the men who had died in their mine. The problem was ventilation,1 the same problem the mine had before it exploded. The company was struggling to find a way to seal No.9’s gobs or ventilate them to meet the law. Unable to convince state and federal officials to lift their mine closure orders, the company was forced to continue its recovery effort in order to bring more coal out of the No.9 with the hope that at some point they could move into full production. The company also wanted the widows who had not signed their $10,000 agreement to do so and to drop their lawsuits. Sara Kaznoski and seven other widows refused to cooperate, and union miners were not ready to stop looking for the dead. UMW Elections On the national scene, the United Mine Workers of America was reinventing itself. The federal government had voided the 1969 election that kept 20 188 CHAPTER 20 Tony Boyle in office and was overseeing a new election in December 1972.2 Boyle still was favored to win, even though he was appealing his conviction for using union funds to make illegal campaign contributions. He had not yet been convicted of the murders of his former challenger, Jock Yablonski, and his wife and daughter. Boyle lost the election to Miners for Democracy candidate, Arnold Miller. A West Virginia coal miner with black lung disease, Miller immediately cut his salary from Boyle’s $50,000 to $35,000 and trimmed other leaders’salaries as well.3 He also gave rank-and-file miners the right to vote in union elections, a right that Boyle had taken away and replaced with a 20-member voting board that he appointed.4 Another Disaster Just days after the election, Miller was faced with his first mine disaster as UMW’s president.A methane explosion in the Itmann No.3 mine in Miller’s home county in southern West Virginia had killed five men and seriously injured three others.5 Consol president John Corcoran, whose company owned about one-third of the Itmann mine, was on site along with Miller. The two had a face-off in the lamp house.6 Miller said he was sick of the disasters. “Farmington, of course, shook the hell out of us,” Corcoran said.7 The Blacksville explosion a year earlier forced the company to begin thinking about a “crash course” in safety training, he added.8 That statement was hard to take seriously, particularly when the two men stood before a sign that read: “Safety in ’72 Can Mean a Turkey for You.” Miller threatened strikes if safety didn’t come quickly.9 Consol’s “crash course” was not working at the Itmann No.3. Federal inspectors had been monitoring the mine, which had recorded a coaldust explosion in January 1972 and a methane ignition five months later. Inspectors had withdrawn the men from the Itmann mine four times and written 89 notices of violation in 1972.10 Notices of violations, however, did not mean much in 1972. Chaos in the U.S. Bureau of Mine’s enforcement section had continued to draw criticism from members of Congress. U.S. WHO CAN STOP US? 189 Rep. Ken Hechler, D-West Virginia, asked the U.S. Comptroller General for an update on the U.S. Government Accounting Office’s 1971 investigation .11 The Comptroller General reported that in 1972 the U.S. Bureau of Mines had improved its record somewhat. The number of required coal mine safety and health inspections had risen considerably, yet still fell short of the law’s mandate. Inspectors had increased their use of the mine withdraw orders when they discovered imminent dangers, issuing 4,400 orders in 1971 and 2,800 in 1972.12 The number of mining fatalities had dropped from 144 in 1971 to 122 in 1972, but the number of disabling injuries had risen.13 One of the biggest problems facing the enforcement program was the way it determined how much...