Clinch Valley News

Transcribed from a copy of the Clinch Valley News - April 29, 1938

Mine Explosions Kill Many Men in Recent Years

Southwest Coal Mining Has Been Attended by Tragedy

Buchanan Death List Forty-five

The tragedy at the Keen Mountain Mine of the Red Jacket Coal Corporation in Buchanan last Friday afternoon, in which 45 men were killed in an explosion of mine dust, calls to mind the toll in human lives the coal mining in Virginia occurred at the Laurel Mine in this county March 13, 1884 when 112 men were killed.

The records show the next three largest explosions took place in Tazewell County.  The Laurel mine blast was followed by one at the Pocahontas mine on October 3, 1906, when 36 were killed and by one at the Boissvain mine February 27, 1932, which killed 54 [number not plain] persons.

Other Virginia coal disasters of the current decade were:  Splashdam mine in Dickinson County, June 13, 1932, 10 killed.  Derby mine, Wise County, August 6, 1934, 17 killed. Records of the State Department of labor at Richmond show 376 men killed in all kinds of mine accidents between 1929 and 1937.  The explosion at the Red Jacket mine last Friday is the first major disaster to occur in the newly operated field in Buchanan.  So badly burned and mangled were the bodies taken from the mine that they had to be identified by the check numbers on the electric lamps they wore.  As the bodies were brought up to the outside, they were identified and then placed on flat...to be pulled down the winding dinky railway to the highway 1600 feet below.  There ambulances, turned into hearses, carried the bodies to Richlands two regular undertaking establishments. Without facilities to take care of the victims, the Richlands undertakers called on Bristol, Abingdon, Coeburn embalmers to help.

Persons near the mines at the time said there were two explosions.  A light one was soon followed by a blast which belched from the mouth of the mine to cause buildings to quake for miles around.

Several motorists driving along the highway, several miles away, reported they felt the blast jar their automobile.  Persons at home two miles away in the Keen Mountain town said it shook their homes.

Two eight ton locomotives on the outside near the entrance were reported blasted from the tracks, and the nearby sand-house was shattered to splinters.  The concussion sent rock a distance of one-half mile.

The mine lies near the top of Keen Mountain, nearly 1600 feet above Levisa River valley, about 11 miles east of Grundy on the Richlands-Grundy highway.

Already, in little more than six months of operation 21 drift mouths had been developed from the main tunnel of the mine.  The Keen Mountain plant had grown to be one of the largest coal producers in the newly developed coal regions, producing a daily average of 2,000 tons.

The Red Jacket mining operation had already acquired the title of “Model Mining Town” in the region predicted to replace the Pocahontas coalfields ad “America’s Coal Bin”. It’s attractively built and conveniently laid out homes for miners and their families are about tow miles away from the dust and noise of the tipple.

A narrow gauge railway winds its way from the foot of the mountain to the mine nearly a quarter a mile above.