Danger in the Hole
|
|
|
| Helen Estep had supper ready to put on the table at five o’clock on October 28, 1958, just as she did every day. She waited for her husband, Jim, to come home from his job at Imperial Smokeless Coal near Leivasy, in southern Nicholas County. But time passed, and still Jim didn’t show up at their home in Crichton, near Quinwood, located across the line in Greenbrier County. Finally, at seven o’clock, Jim Williams, the chief electrician at the No. 2 mine, came to the house to tell Helen that her husband had been called as part of the Imperial Smokeless Mine Rescue Team to an accident at the old Richwood Sewell Mine. The day had started normally. Later that morning, however, Jim Williams came inside the mine where Jim Estep was working to tell him that the Mine Rescue Team was needed at the Burton mine of the Oglebay Norton Coal Company. Jim Estep, who is now my father-in-law, had been part of the rescue team since it was formed in 1954. Jim’s first job in a coal mine was in 1937, when he was 17 years old. He had sold powder at the company store for Koppers Coal Company in Elk Ridge when he was 16 and started hand-loading coal the following year. “We hand-loaded coal for 30 cents a ton. The cars were six-ton cars. I was on one side, and Dad was on the other,” Jim recalls. “I’ve never been without a job since then. Never drew unemployment. They used to say we had three meals a day: corn meal, oatmeal, and miss a meal.” For three years, Jim worked at Rossmore in Logan County. In 1941 he married Helen Nagy at Logan; in 1942 they came to Quinwood, where Jim started working for Imperial Smokeless Coal Company as a day laborer underground. In 1949 he became a section boss and, in 1953 he received his mine foreman’s certificate. He retired in 1982 after working in mining for more than 40 years. Jim and Helen Estep still live in Crichton, in the same house where they lived when the accident occurred. “At one time,” Jim reminisces, “there were 3,000 miners living in Quinwood. We had two barbershops, a Kroger store, seven beer joints, a movie theater, two restaurants, and a department store.” The original Imperial Smokeless Mine Safety Team consisted of mine foremen and engineers: Dick Nesselrotte, Glen Shannon, Bill Coffey, M.D. Legg, Friday Hambrick, and Jim Estep. As spaces opened up on the team, other miners were added. “We went back over once a week to train,” says Jim. “We trained from seven to nine in the evenings, once a week, or four times a month. The state paid us four dollars for each week we trained. They provided us with coveralls. I was kind of late getting there one evening, so I was left with a pair of coveralls that was too big. I had to roll the sleeves up on them. But after they laundered them, they all shrunk. Mine was the only set that fit.” Bill Derring, a state mine inspector, helped to train the team. Bill was underground during a mine accident in 1915 at Layland, where he was trapped in the mine for four days. According to Jim, Bill told them that one of the things those miners did to survive was to eat the bark off the support posts in the mine. “Now almost every mine has a rescue team,” says Jim, “but back then they were just trying to get the teams organized.” Current mine rescue teams participate in competitions to improve their skills, but few rescue teams in 1954 had that kind of opportunity to prepare for a real-life situation. [See “‘Worth Their Weight in Gold’: Recalling Red Jacket Safety Day,” by Joe Plasky; Summer 2007.] On the morning of October 28, 1958, the Imperial Smokeless Mine Rescue Team received its first call to respond to a mining accident. You can read the rest of this article in this issue of Goldenseal, available in bookstores, libraries or direct from Goldenseal. |
