Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Benwood Mine Disaster. It was shortly after 7 a.m. on Monday, April 28, 1924, when an explosion and fire tore through the Wheeling Steel Corp. mine in the northern panhandle community just south of Wheeling.
Over 100 men had gone in the mine just a half-hour before to begin work when the explosion occurred. The Wheeling Register newspaper reported, “a deafening blast of air, a rush of smoke and gas fumes, rocked and tore the sand house and motor sheds, sweeping sections of sheet iron high into the air.”
Rescuers were on the scene quickly, but their efforts were hampered by roof falls, after-damp (the buildup of carbon monoxide after an explosion) and the bodies of the deceased. “Slowly the rescue team pushed their way through the blackness,” the newspaper reported. “Step by step they made their way toward the main entry a mile away.”
A crowd of worried family members gathered in the rain outside the mine. “Women, frantic with fear and many tugging and carrying small children, ran through the heavy rain and wept and wrung their hands piteously as anxious queries were answered only by grim shakes of the head,” the paper reported.
Andy Wilson, captain of one of the rescue teams, said after emerging from the shattered mine, “There’s no hope I fear.” The headline in the Wheeling Intelligencer read, “Last Ray of Hope for Lives of Miners Gone.”
After several days, the rescue efforts were shifted to the task of recovering the bodies. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, “By Friday (four days after the explosion), it became clear that 119 men were dead.”
Temporary morgues were set up, including the nearby Cooey-Bentz furniture and dry goods store. Some of the men who were burned too badly to be identified were buried in a mass grave. Twenty-two of the victims were buried side by side in a mass funeral at the Mt. Calvary cemetery.
An account of the tragedy in the Ohio County Library noted that among the dead were three pairs of fathers and sons, five pairs of brothers and three pairs of cousins.
Most of the workers were immigrants. The list of victims included their nationality: Polish, Italian, Greek, Slavic, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Welsh, Scots, Lithuanian. They were part of the great European diaspora that had come to America for work and a better life.
The West Virginia Encyclopedia reported that the explosion was caused by an open flame on a light that “ignited firedamp, an explosive mixture of methane and air.” In addition, the mine was dry and dusty, so the dust explosion carried to every corner of the mine.
R.M. Lambie, chief of the State Department of Mines, called for improved mine safety. “Present laws must be brought up to date in order to meet the requirements of our fast growing industry, and guard lives and property,” he said. “It is high time that an interstate code of safe-practice regulations be formulated.”
But mining would continue to be a dangerous occupation. Another 239 men would be killed in 12 coal mining disasters in West Virginia before the end of the decade, including 97 miners at the Federal No. 3 mine in Everettville in Monongalia County.
The Benwood Mine Disaster remains the third worst in West Virginia, after the Monongah Mine disaster in 1907 where 361 miners died and the Eccles Explosion in 1913 that killed 183 miners.
