The Enemy

The few "small pockets" of gas that Federal Mine Bureau inspectors had found in the cavernous Nottingham colliery were only minor enemies to Danny Lewis and the 15,500 mine people of Plymouth, Pa. There were gas pockets in almost every anthracite mine in Pennsylvania. Besides, Danny had known greater enemies. Last September, when his confectionery business waned, he had closed out and begun digging coal to support his wife and two children.

With his 22-man night shift last week, Danny went 835 feet down into the Nottingham's top Ross vein--a black and echoing tunnel under the Susquehanna River. The federal inspectors had removed the explosive methane gas pockets when they last visited the top Ross vein in September. This night, soon after Danny began digging, the gas pockets came back.

Miner Thomas Miles told what happened. "I asked my laborer, Charlie Krawiec, what time it was. 'It's 5:45,' says he. Charlie had just put up his watch when the blast came. The props in my place were twisted and blown down. We ran out into the slope and saw several men sprawled around . . . [and] helped them to the foot of the shaft. . . . Boulders as big as kitchen tables had been blown around. . . . Mine cars made of hardwood were blown into splinters. Tracks were twisted. . . . Seven of us got out. . . ."

That left 15. In the shivering crowd around the mine's entrance, 13 new widows and their 31 children began the lament Plymouth had heard after two other Nottingham explosions--in 1890 (eight dead) and in 1910 (seven dead). While gas-masked rescuers battled for their bodies, the names of the dead--Craynik, Parker, Zonobrowski, Bockus, Wilde, Ostrowski, Lewis--ran through the dark like a sigh.

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