McAlester Blast

Stiff-faced and stoical was a crowd clustered about the entrance of the Old Town Coal Company's mine at McAlester, Okla. last week. Out of the mine were carried 60 bodies. Three were unconscious, overcome by afterdamp (carbon monoxide) which had followed a muffled explosion below. The rest, wrapped in burlap to conceal the charred mutilation or gas-choked contortions of their faces, were dead. Of them, 34 were Mexicans, 15 were Negroes. The bodies were exhibited in improvised morgues. Many were unidentifiable. One was identified by a broken toe.

The shaft of the mine slopes down 3,500 ft. The three miners rescued alive were working on an upper level. Below, the workings were choked with wreckage and deadly gas. Miners blamed sparks from an electric coal-cutting machine for the blast.

Hugh C. Rice, manager of the mine, admitted that his company carried no compensation insurance, would be able to give little financial aid to the dead miners' families. He expressed belief that the wrecked mine would be abandoned. It would be costly to restore, he said, and most miners would superstitiously refuse to work in its ghost-haunted galleries.

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