The Monongah Mine Disaster

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America's deadliest mining disaster unfolded in an instant on December 6, 1907, when a broken coupling pin sent coal carts careening down rails, showering sparks through dusty mine air. What happened next would change mining safety forever.

The Monongah Mining Disaster tells the harrowing story of miners trapped beneath West Virginia soil when explosions ripped through connected mines #6 and #8. With entrances collapsed, ventilation destroyed, and toxic gases filling every passage, rescue workers faced a nightmare scenario as they desperately dug through debris in 15-minute shifts, their faces covered with nothing but jackets against the poisonous air.

This episode exposes the deadly conditions that made the disaster inevitable: miners using open-flame torches amid coal dust, exposed electrical wiring, dangerous explosive practices, and mines connected by wooden doors—a configuration already outlawed everywhere except West Virginia. We explore how profit-driven decisions by the Fairmont Coal Company created the perfect environment for catastrophe, from employing immigrant workers with few options to allowing children as young as eight to work underground.

Beyond the official death toll of 362 lies a darker truth about undocumented workers, overwhelming grief as caskets lined town streets, and the corporate investigation that predictably blamed worker carelessness rather than systemic failures. Yet from this tragedy came meaningful change—the creation of the Bureau of Mines, new safety regulations, and the first steps toward protecting miners' lives.

Mining remains dangerous work today, but the Monongah disaster forced America to reckon with the human cost of coal extraction. Share this episode with someone who appreciates forgotten stories that shaped our nation, and leave a review to help others discover these crucial moments when history truly became a disaster.

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
So do coal miners get off December 6th.
It is National Miners Day,after all, and if you didn't
know that, join the club.
I had no idea either.
It was created in 2009 by anact of Congress as a way to
thank and honor miners.
December 6th is also theanniversary of the worst mining

(00:25):
accident in US history.
So, yep, let's celebrate minerson the anniversary of a whole
bunch of them getting killed.
Anyways, way back in 1907, anexplosion ripped through the
Fairmont Coal Company's number 6and number 8 mines.
In the explosion and thecollapse that followed, over 300

(00:47):
miners were killed.
So what happened?
I'm Andrew, and this isHistory's A Disaster.
So tonight we are digging intothe earth and taking a look at

(01:07):
the worst mining disaster inAmerican history, and for that
we are going to Monongah, westVirginia.
And this was a straight upmining town.
The coal industry wasconstantly pushing westward in
its never-ending search for morecoal and greater profits, so
they set up a lot of theselittle towns, towns who only

(01:30):
existed at the whims of the coalcompany and Monongah, west
Virginia, was no different.
The Fairmont Coal Company had astranglehold on the town, which
is pretty easy to do when thecompany's manager is also the
mayor of the town.
Add in shitty wages and companystores with extremely high

(01:51):
prices, and most people didn'thave many options, especially
when most of the people workingthe mines were immigrants.
Straight off the boat andrailroaded down to West Virginia
to work the mines, and sinceprofit was the name of the game
and there wasn't a whole lot ofregulations when it came to
mining in the early 1900s,safety wasn't a major concern

(02:15):
and they cut a whole lot ofcorners.
The number six and eight mineentrances were over a mile apart
, but the mines were connectedto each other by a heavy wooden
door, a practice that hadalready been outlawed in every
other state in all of Europe.
West Virginia was the onlyplace that this was still being

(02:35):
done.
Now these mines could be ventedseparately, but being connected
to each other meant that theycould both be vented out a
single entrance, and it wouldalso make transporting coal
between the two mines a loteasier.
Also, while they would at leastsomewhat water down the
passageways to damp down coaldust, no efforts to this effect

(02:56):
were made in the rooms that theactual mining was happening,
which made the rooms, especiallyin the winter, extremely dusty.
They did not have adequateequipment to keep up with it.
So it was done almost as anafterthought.
Plus, being the middle ofwinter, the water taps freezing
over was a common problem.

(03:17):
Now, electricity in the minecame from exposed copper wires
which didn't extend very far,and since they didn't have
things like headlamps orflashlights, they used open
flame torches to see deeper intothe mine.
And these mines ran deep,stretching over 500 miles.
As they sloped down into theearth following a seam of coal,

(03:40):
they used electric cuttingmachines and black powder to
mine the coal, creating rooms.
As they dug deeper into theearth, the heavy cutting
equipment would be used toundercut the coal seam, and then
holes would be drilled by handabout six feet deep and filled
with black powder.
Once the black powder went off,the force of the explosion

(04:02):
would break up the coal seamfrom the wall.
From there, the miners wouldbreak the coal up further with
pickaxes and load it onto minecarts.
And since the miners got paidby how much coal was mined that
day, they would cut cornerswhenever they could to mine more
coal faster.
To do this, they would often dowhat's called shooting off the

(04:22):
solid, which is basically thesame method to break up the seam
, except they skip the partwhere they undercut the coal
first, which made it way moredangerous.
Without the coal being undercut, the explosive force had
nowhere else to go except backout towards the miners.

(04:45):
It would send a lot of sparksand chunks of coal flying back
into the mine, which again smartidea.
Let's send a bunch of sparksinto a mine full of coal dust
and potential methane gaspockets.
Anyways, the use of electricmotors and mine carts helped to
pull the ore back up to thesurface and they would pull a

(05:07):
lot of coal out.
A total of over 2,000 tons ofcoal a day was pulled out of
both mines.
And these mines ran every day,all day.
There was no stopping, noholidays, no weekends.
It was an around-the-clockoperation.

(05:28):
Friday December 6th started outlike any other day.
The day shift was startingtheir day before the ass crack
of dawn.
Officially, over 400 minerschecked into work.
Unofficially, that number wasmuch higher.
A lot of the workers oftenbrought undocumented workers to
assist them in the mines.
Most of them were relatives ortheir own kids, because

(05:51):
apparently every day was bringyour kid to work day in the
early 1900s.
It was also extremely cold thatday, so most of them were
bundled up in what passed forwinter clothing.
As they worked, they filled upthe mine carts, which were
loaded down and pulled up to thesurface of the mine.
Shortly before 10.30 am, a trainof 14 cars loaded with nearly

(06:16):
40 tons of coal was being pulledup from the no 6 mine when a
coupler pin broke and sent thecars flying back down the rails
out of control.
As it descended, it was kickingup sparks into the dusty air
before crashing near the bottom.
Within minutes of the accident,an explosion ripped through the

(06:37):
mine.
Through the mine, thisexplosion traveled through both
mines, setting off a largerexplosion in another section of
the mine.
As the explosions rippedthrough the mine, it destroyed
wood support timbers, causingnumerous roof collapses.

(06:58):
Pockets of methane gas and coaldust were set ablaze.
The entrance to the numbereight mine was completely
destroyed, along with theventilation fan.
The entrance to number six wascompletely blocked by debris and
fire.
Mine carts had been tossedhundreds of feet away.
The rails they used were bentand twisted and sent flying to

(07:23):
spear into the ground.
Ventilation shafts were buried.
As the explosion changed theshape of the earth, thousands of
tons of stone collapsed andfilled the lower levels of the
mine.
The explosion was felt milesaway.
The blast would destroy windowsin Menanga.
Then the rain from theexplosion pelted the town.

(07:44):
Stone pieces of wood and chunksof metal rained down on the
unsuspecting town.
Rescue attempts would beginwithin a half hour of the
explosion.
Lacking any sort of officialfire brigades, it would be the
locals of Menanggak whoorganized the rescue attempts.
Miners and medical staff fromsurrounding towns would

(08:06):
eventually join in the attempt,and these rescue attempts were
hampered from the start.
With the entrances blocked,they had to dig their way in and
, with the coal seam burning,the entrances were extremely hot
, like unapproachably hot.
Eventually, they would be ableto get close enough to start
digging out the entrance.

(08:26):
Everyone from town pitched in.
Large rocks were dug out byhand and horses would be used to
pull twisted pieces of metalout of the way.
It took them 25 minutes to digout the entrance the number
eight, and they stepped into anightmare.
Almost 100 miners had made it tothe collapsed entrance.

(08:47):
Only half of them wereidentifiable.
The rest of them were so badlyburned.
Some of them had fused together.
Miners typically wore a metaltag to help with identification
in case of a disaster like this,but the heat was so bad that it
had melted the tags, makingthem unusable.

(09:08):
Lacking any sort of breathinggear, rescuers could not spend
more than 15 minutes in the mine, with the ventilation shafts
and fans destroyed.
The mines were filling up withfumes, black damp, a mix of
carbon dioxide and nitrogen thatcontained zero oxygen, along

(09:32):
with what they called white dampor carbon dioxide, was filling
up sections of the mine.
These toxic fumes, the smell ofburnt flesh and fires filled
the mine.
Rescuers tried to protectthemselves by covering their
faces with jackets and cloth,which is great.
They did what they could, butwhile this would help with some

(09:54):
areas, it would do absolutelynothing to help in areas without
any oxygen.
They would eventually be ableto get the number six mine fan
working again, but with only onefan working it would be
extremely slow going to vent outthe toxic fumes that were
building up in the mines.
It would take over a week forrescuers to make their way all

(10:17):
the way through.
They had to put out fires anddeal with cave-ins along with
pockets of toxic fumes as theyworked their way through.
Three of the rescuers would endup dying in the attempt.
Nearly every single miner caughtin the mines was killed either
in the blast or the days thatfollowed, as they slowly

(10:38):
suffocated on the toxic fumes.
Only one miner was rescued.
Four others managed to maketheir own way out.
The official death toll is 362,but the real number is most
likely much higher.
The number of miners that hadchecked in to work is up for

(10:58):
debate, since the board theyused to check in was destroyed
in the blast.
Estimates range somewherebetween four and five hundred
were there that day.
Plus, there was all thoseundocumented workers that were
brought in, including childrenas young as eight.
The mortuary in town wouldeventually be overrun as they

(11:18):
pulled all these bodies out ofthe mines, so caskets would end
up lining the streets ofMonongah as they waited for the
funerals to follow.
The actual cause of the initialexplosion has never been
officially determined, with themost likely theory being a spark

(11:41):
from either the mine cart crashor a black powder explosion
igniting the coal dust thatfilled the mine.
Cart crash or a black powderexplosion igniting the coal dust
that filled the mine.
There would be multipleinvestigations in finding out
exactly what happened.
Fairmont Coal Company's owninvestigation concluded the
accident was caused by minorerror, most likely carelessness

(12:02):
with the open flame torches theyhad to use to see.
But whatever the cause of theaccident, it was the final straw
for some people.
In 1907, 3,241 people werekilled in mining accidents, over
700 of them just in Decemberalone.

(12:22):
The public outcry was huge anddemanded answers.
In 1908, president Rooseveltpushed for a new federal agency
to investigate mine accidentsand teach accident prevention.
It would take two years for theBureau of Mines to be formed.
Field offices would be set upto help train mine crews,

(12:45):
provide rescue services andinvestigate disasters.
New safety regulations wouldalso be adopted, like the
requirements to keep the minessprayed down, to reduce the
amount of coal dust in the air,and children under 12 would no
longer be allowed to work in themines and 12-year-olds working

(13:07):
the mines still isn't great, butat least they were taking steps
in the right direction andthings would eventually get
better.
While mining is still prettydangerous today, it's still a
hell of a lot safer than it was100 years ago, of a lot safer
than it was 100 years ago.

(13:28):
And that was the Monongahmining accident, the worst
mining accident in US historyand the catalyst for much-needed
changes in the industry.
Thanks for listening and if youenjoyed the show, please

(13:48):
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wouldn't be a disaster.

(14:09):
Thanks and goodbye.