“As sure as they sing songs about the price they pay to dig coal, they will talk about the day a wall of water swept like a freight train through the veins of Kocher Coal Company’s Porter Tunnel on Brookside Mountain…”
– Shenandoah Evening Herald, March 7, 1977
The following account of the Porter Tunnel Mine Disaster on March 1, 1977 comes from the pages of the Pottsville Republican on March 3, 1977. In it, a young survivor of the mine disaster tells his story of survival and terror in the mine near Tower City, Pennsylvania.
Nine of his colleagues died in the disaster. One man, Ronald Adley, was rescued from the mine on March 6, 1977.
Read more about the Porter Tunnel Disaster here.
Roar of water filled young miner with terror
Joe Narcavage said the sound of air rushing through the tunnels of the Kocher Coal Co. mine and the roar of water filled him with terror.
Narcavage, 23, Mt. Carmel, a trained geologist who has worked as a miner for the past year because he could not find a job in his profession, said he was operating a conveyor belt Tuesday when water from an abandoned mine tunnel burst through a wall into the Kocher mine.
“As soon as I saw what was happening, I dived down a 40-foot manway without even touching the ladder rungs on the side,” he said.
“I turned and looked into the gangway and all I saw was a wall of water coming at me.”
Narcavage said the water swept him into a part of the main tunnel where he and Jim McHale, a fellow worker, managed to scramble through the water to the safety of a side passageway.
“It was infinitely frightening,” he said. “I have never been so terrified in my life.”
He said he and McHale saw a fellow miner, Harry Fishburn Jr., 25, being swept away by the water. He said they managed to pull him to safety.
“I’ll tell you this, Jim saved Harry’s life,” Narcavage said.
McHale and Narcavage said they managed to get Fishburn to the rear portion of the mine tunnel where they made their way to the surface by climbing up through a 600-foot airshaft.
“It’s a good place to work and they have always been kind to men,” Narcavage said. “This was a perfectly safe operation. But I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t think I’ll go back in. I’m really scared.”
McHale said:
“I’m going back in, but I’m going to look for another job.”
In another interview, McHale said the following, a sad post-script to this disaster and the economic conditions that gripped the Coal Region in the late 1970s:
“I don’t want to go back into that mine, but I can’t afford not to,” McHale said.
Read more about Porter Tunnel
The Porter Tunnel Disaster | March 1, 1977
Photograph of a mineworker during the Porter Tunnel disaster rescue efforts | March 1977
Remembering the local emergency response to the Porter Tunnel Disaster | March 1977
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