Diamond Mine Disaster remembered, 137 years later

Sixty-nine men and boys, a few as young as 13, drowned 137 years ago this month in the deep underground tunnels of the Diamond Coal Mine No. 2, in what today is called “The Diamond Mine Disaster.”

The mine was situated on the Will-Grundy County line, at the current site of the Diamond sewer plant.

It’s a modern lesson on choices and consequences, profits, making a living and short-term and long-term costs, said local historian Michele Micetich, who spoke of the incident, what led up to it and what came from it at a recent presentation at the Coal City Public Library.

“This mine was well run by the standards of that time,” she said. “Bosses on site were fair. Presidents of companies, their boards and shareholders were in the background and far less empathetic. ... The company was cheap, and they just wanted to get their coal out.”

Water cave-ins from a similar flooding had occurred three years before the Diamond Mine Disaster, but the owners didn’t learn the lessons of that event. They might have thought nothing like it would ever happen again. Or they simply might have not cared.

This was back when human life was considered expendable, Micetich said, and profit was everything.

It wouldn’t remain such an unsafe environment for workers for long, though. The Diamond Mine Disaster was the impetus for the important Mining Act of 1883, which set into place a multitude of safety standards for miners. Later regulations made the industry even safer.

One of the reasons so many died in the Diamond Mine Disaster, Micetich said, was the scarcity of exits. Some were a mile apart. There also were dips in the tunnels, where miners had dug deeper following the veins of coal. When the water poured in, those dips became water-filled barriers to escape.

Men were later required to wear brass tags engraved with their names when they descended into mine shafts, as many bodies were misidentified after the Diamond disaster.

The 1883 disaster occurred after a snow melt. Rains added to the standing water above the mine. Micetich said the land was swampland in a glacial moraine to begin with, and the melting snow and ice began seeping into the already saturated ground.

Suddenly, the ground gave way and water began gushing into the mine. The tunnels filled with water, and some collapsed. The “lake” above the mine turned into a 50-foot by 90-foot vortex. The pumper Tom Daley was the first to notice the water.

The engineer sounded the alarm, and the large emergency whistle was blown.

“Then everybody came running,” Micetich said.

The miners who were not working that day and the families, all of whom lived near enough to the mine to hear the whistle, ran to the site.

Of the approximately 300 men employed by the Wilmington Mining and Manufacturing Coal Company at the site, about 180 were working the day of the disaster; some were working up above, but most were down in the tunnels.

Some were close enough to the exits to scramble out. Others were rescued, and still others had to run or swim their way to the exits, where they were pulled out. One miner made his way out to safety only to learn that his son was still inside. He dove back in, and neither he nor his son were seen alive again.

The rescue operation soon became one of recovery. The scene was horrible, Micetich said. The air was filled with wails of grief as bodies were pulled up, along with cries of joy when living men appeared out of the air shafts.

“It took them six weeks of men going down to see who they could find,” she said. “You’ll see cases where whole families were lost.”

Micetich said the mine never re-opened.

“The mining company cleaned up the mess, and most of the German widows went back to Germany,” she said.

A widows’ fund was set up for those who lost husbands.

Some of the survivors took up other professions in other towns. Some returned to mining. Eight of the men who had survived the Diamond cave-in moved to work the coal mine in Cherry, Illinois, where they were killed by the 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster.

In the years following the cave-in, some families took advantage of open air shafts to cool off in during the hot summer months.

Today, the land above the Diamond tunnels is a bit of a roller coaster of dips where areas have caved in over the years. Micetich said the Trotter Dairy property had a subsidence of about three feet on one side.

Members of the audience told of open air vents from the tunnels large enough for families to throw large broken appliances. Many of the openings are capped today, but there are still areas where they are open.

Nick Koba of Diamond attended the presentation and said he had worked at one of the strip mines in the area. It was a dangerous profession, he said. Between 1927 and 1974, 10 men were killed there. They were crushed, burned to death by steam, electrocuted or drowned.

Koba said he, himself, had almost drowned in 1968 when torrents of rainwater poured into the pit. He managed to scramble up and out in his truck. It was a good thing, he said, because he couldn’t swim.

Bryan Gilligan, a reference librarian at the Coal City Public Library, said he has learned a lot from historians like Micetich. It’s important to learn about local history, he said.

“It helps connect us to the area,” he said. “A lot of people died in this disaster who had descendants who still live here ... You still hear stories passed down from generation to generation.”

Gilligan said the area towns have such a rich history, and it’s important to pass that along.