Eighty-two years after a 1930 disaster in Millfield claimed the lives of 82 miners, the Athens County Historical Society and Museum will host the Millfield Mine Disaster Remembrance on Monday.
The hour-long commemoration will take place at 5 p.m. at the museum, 65 N. Court St., and the museum’s director, Ron Luce, is scheduled to give a presentation. He will talk to attendees about a few of the miners who died and show pictures of the mine as well as miners who worked there.
“It’s the biggest mine disaster in the state of Ohio and it was devastating to this entire area,” Luce said. “It was a major event in its day.”
The disaster occurred in the Sunday Creek Coal Company Mine Number 6 in Dover Township, about five miles from Athens, Luce said.
“About two miles underground, a rock fall caused an electric wire that should not have been alive to fall and spark on a railroad bed,” Luce said.
The area had not been ventilated properly, so dangerous gases accumulated underground. When a spark hit the coal dust, it caused an explosion that ran through the mines, Luce said.
“When you have that kind of explosion, the vast majority of the oxygen is essentially sucked out of the air,” he said. “Most of the men died of suffocation, although some were severely blown apart by the explosion itself.”
Luce said the disaster’s severity could be attributed to a disregard for basic safety guidelines on the part of the coal company and the employees.
“Mining is an extremely dangerous business even when you do follow the rules,” Luce said.
This failure to follow protocol and the use of antiquated equipment may have cost 82 miners their lives.
“I feel compelled to do this. Mostly what I want to do is remind people that these men meant something,” Luce said. “I think too often in American culture miners have been thought of as somehow lesser than, but these were human beings with families. They deserve some sort of commemoration.”
af116210@ohiou.edu
