Mine Explosion Echoes Tragedy From Long Ago

(April 8) -- When Susan Kushner Resnick heard the news that at least 25 West Virginia coal miners had died in an explosion, she "just started to cry."

Tragedy struck a few weeks after "Goodbye Wifes and Daughters," Resnick's book about Montana's worst coal mining catastrophe, was published. The events unfolding at the Upper Big Branch Mine were all too reminiscent of her heartbreaking story about the blast at the Smith Mine in Bearcreek that killed 74 men in 1943.

"I just thought, 'Again?' And then I got angry," Resnick said. "Why does this keep happening? What lesson are we not learning?"

A mine with a history of safety violations, an owner accused of valuing profits over lives, a methane explosion -- followed by the agony of families waiting for answers. "All of that happens in my book," she said.

This week's disaster didn't surprise Resnick.

"I knew it would happen again," she said. But she didn't expect so many deaths because she thought recently enacted mine safety laws were having an effect. The toll from this one incident exceeded the 18 coal mining deaths recorded in the U.S. during all of last year, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

"There's no way this should have happened, but it keeps happening," Resnick lamented. She said mine operators quickly figure out the system every time new regulations are imposed.

"There's one way that they could really change things and that would be to put the mine operators in jail, which I wish had happened in '43," Resnick added. "I think it's criminal negligence and murder. But that's not going to happen."

Resnick acknowledged the economic pressures that drive the deadly cycle. In 1943, the men at the Smith Mine were racing to produce coal that was crucial to winning World War II. Now, with the nation struggling to emerge from recession, companies are fighting for every dollar and miners are trying to earn as much as they can to support their families, despite the risks. For generations, the mines have been the only source of a decent income for most people in coal country.

The Smith Mine disaster just about wiped out Bearcreek.

"The company kept mining for a little while, but so many people lost their livelihoods that it really broke up the whole community," Resnick said. However, it's not exactly a ghost town. Resnick -- a New Englander with no previous connection to Montana or mining -- visited the place during a family vacation and learned about the story by reading framed newspaper articles on the walls of a saloon. Her book research began on the spot.

"People just talked to me right there in that saloon. People started giving me names. They'd waited all those decades for someone to ask," the author recalled.

One of the people she met while preparing the book is Bob Wakenshaw, whose father and both grandfathers died in the Smith Mine explosion. She e-mailed Wakenshaw to ask him what he thought caused the latest tragedy. His answer: "Just greed."

Does Resnick, who wrote about the West Virginia disaster in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, think she'll ever see the day when there will be no more stories like this?

"I actually think not. Until people stop mining inside the earth ... when robots are doing it."

Resnick said she intended "Goodbye Wifes and Daughters" to inspire a grassroots push for changes that could end the cycle of mine disasters. Especially after this week's heartbreak in West Virginia, she said, she hopes readers will recognize "this is a pattern."