At the Bitter Heart

Under the black slag heaps and airborne soot of the Franco-Belgian borderland lie coal mines that plunge deep--2,000, 2,500, 3,000 ft.--into the bowels of the earth, using obsolete equipment and backbreaking labor to eke out small hauls from old veins. Close by the small town of Marcinelle is the mine called Amercoeur, the "Bitter Heart." There one morning last week, 302 miners--115 of them Belgians, 139 Italians--dropped 3,105 ft. underground in their steel-cage elevators to their daily jobs at the coal face. Above ground the miners' families, mostly poor Italians imported with their husbands from overpopulated Italy,* went about their chores.

At 10 a.m., the women who had their radios on heard a chilling announcement cut into the Belgian broadcasting system's light-music program: there was trouble at the Bitter Heart, and fire engines, asbestos suits, fire extinguishers were needed. Outside, a 300-ft. plume of bilious-looking yellow smoke was already rising languidly above the mine shaft.

"Santa Maria!" As word of the catastrophe shuddered through the cobbled streets of Marcinelle, fire engines and ambulances, jeeps packed with police in steel helmets, and scurrying hundreds of horrified people, rushed to the pit. Italian women were shrieking, "We want our men!", praying "Santa Maria! Santa Maria!" Black-robed priests and Red Cross nurses moved about beneath a spreading pall of coal dust and grime.

At the pit head only six men had got out. One gasped a dreadful story: he smelled bitter smoke, dashed with five friends for the elevator, made it to the surface only seconds ahead of a belch of yellow smoke and rearing flames. Apparently a horse-drawn cart had jumped its rails in one of the galleries, tearing into a high-tension cable, setting off a short circuit, explosion and fire.

Firemen set to work. "If you use water they may drown," said one. "But if you don't the fire will suffocate them." Fire hoses proved ineffective. Then rescuers equipped with oxygen masks, steel helmets, rubber boots and courage went 400 ft. down one of the shafts, returned with eyebrows singed, rubber boots half melted, and crying, "It is a furnace down there." Other rescuers broke out of a new and untouched shaft into one of the old galleries, brought out three bodies and one injured man. As the ambulance bore the injured man off to the hospital, women threw themselves down in its path, demanding that the ambulance stop so that they could see whether the man inside was theirs.

Devil's Work. When night fell, 261 miners were still entombed. Perhaps that first day some still clung to life in small holes and alcoves, somehow fending off the flames, floods and noxious gases from the fires high above them. No one knew. Above ground, great searchlights showed up huddles of women now too tired to weep, their babies asleep with their toys. "Coal Mining! Not even the devil would do it!" one old man croaked hoarsely, when morning broke once more across Belgium's Bitter Heart.

Twice during the long vigil, Belgium's young King Baudouin appeared at the pit head, the first time dressed as he was when he got the news, in sport clothes, the second time dressed in black. Shaking hands right and left, murmuring words of sympathy, Baudouin abruptly turned toward one of the grimy rescuers who had just come up from the pit, gripped his shoulders with both hands and said, "There must be some hope." The rescue worker, at the end of his strength, turned away and broke into sobs.

* Which last February refused to grant any more miners' exit permits for Belgium on the ground that mine security there was inadequate.

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