Mine Explosion Echoes Tragedy From Long Ago
by Steve Pendlebury, AOL News
"(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," he 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."... "
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One morning in 1943, close to eighty men descended into the Smith coal mine in Bearcreek, Montana. Only three came out alive. “Goodbye wifes and daughters . . .” wrote two of the miners as they died. The story of that tragic day and its aftermath unfolds in this book through the eyes of those wives and daughters—women who lost their husbands, fathers, and sons, livelihoods, neighbors, and homes, yet managed to fight back and persevere.
