Wilberg Mine disaster 30th anniversary remembrance

By RICHARD SHAW Publisher and PATSY STODDARD Editor

Dec. 19 was the 30th anniversary of the Wilberg Mine disaster. To recognize and remember this event and those who lost their lives, the UMWA held a memorial service. Mike Dalpiaz, the vice-president of the International Mine Workers Dist. #22 presided over the service. He thanked everyone for coming and the ceremony opened with the reading of a poem read by Tanya Henrie. The poem talked of remembering the miners in the rising of the sun, with the wind and in the winter, spring, summer and fall. With the opening of the bud, with the beauty all around. As the years pass we will continue to remember them and will bond together to always remember them.
Dalpiaz said there were 27 candles on the table to represent each of those who lost their lives in the disaster. Each family was asked to come forward when their family member’s name was read. The candle for them would be lit and then placed in the circle and then family members would blow out the candle to represent the life of that miner going out. Each family stepped forward at their appointed time to take part in the candle ceremony. After the miners names were read the names of the company men who died that night were also recognized.
Dalpiaz announced the ceremony of the evergreen. He said the branches of the evergreen tree always remain green as a symbol of life. The evergreen ceremony is a last sad tribute of love for each victim. The names of each of the victims were read. Dalpiaz said what happened to these miners speaks to our mortality. They were cut down. Their spirits returned to God and departed to the hereafter. God gives comfort to those left behind. We shall meet them in the life hereafter. At this time Dalpiaz invited everyone to come forward and lay an evergreen bough at the base of the monument for the miners. Dennis Ardohain also participated in the ceremony, he was with Energy West Mining at the time of the disaster.
History of the diaster: On Dec. 19, 1984, a disaster happened at the Wilberg Mine that made international news, and to date recorded the largest loss of life in a coal mine in Utah since the Castle Gate explosion of 1924.
On Dec. 19 of that year a fire erupted approximately 5,000 feet from the main entrance into the Wilberg underground coal production facility operated by Emery Mining Corporation.
The 9:30 p.m. blaze trapped 27 employees working inside the longwall, fifth right section, at Energy West’s mining operation near Orangeville.
According to the official recorded statements, two management employees along with 25 miners and a general maintenance foreman were attempting to set a world’s record for tonnage produced in a 24-hour period on a longwall operation when the fatal fire ignited inside the underground facility.
Only one person working inside the underground facility at the time of the incident managed to escape from Wilberg’s smoke-filled shafts on that fateful Wednesday evening 30 years ago.
Maintenance foreman Kenneth Blake, identified as a Price resident when the deadly fire erupted in the underground shafts, was the only Wilberg employee working inside the underground coal production to survive the disaster.
Concentrated rescue efforts on Dec. 20, 1984 included drilling a three-inch hole from the Little Dove mine through 700 feet of solid rock into a new entryway being cut at Wilberg.
The purpose behind drilling the three-inch hole focused on establishing a means to supply food, water and air to any trapped workers who had managed to avoid succumbing to the smoke and poisonous gases permeating Wilberg’s mining shafts.
The company and miners from throughout the Carbon-Emery area, along with United States Mine Safety and Health Administration representatives, hoped that the 27 employees had been able to reach a new entryway being driven near the face of Wilberg.
Officials theorized that the dead-end area at the mine entryway site would keep the air circulation down in the shafts. And by constructing an emergency brattice barricade at the entrance, perhaps the trapped workers managed to survive on the relatively clean air remaining in the chamber. After entering Wilberg on Dec. 21, 1984, rescue team members discovered a group of nine dead underground coal miners at a location only 200 feet beyond the fire.
Later that day, search and rescue personnel found the bodies of four victims approximately 600 feet from the blaze.
The crews also discovered two more of the trapped underground workers at a site another 50 feet away.
Approaching Wilberg’s face late Dec. 22, 1984, rescue teams found 12 additional dead miners.
Rescuers also discovered a partially erected barricade approximately 2,700 feet from the entrance into the section. But the searchers found no evidence to indicate that any of the 27 trapped employees ever reached the dead-end area at the mine’s new entryway site.
Three of the victims’ bodies were located in front of the barricade, seven dead miners were lying behind it and two workers were discovered in a separate underground shaft at Wilberg. Before search and rescue crew members could remove the bodies of the 27 Emery Mining employees, the fire raged completely out of control.
The blazing inferno forced the teams to pull out of the Wilberg mine in what ultimately constituted the final 1984 effort to recover the trapped workers’ remains from the underground facility.
On Sunday, Dec. 23, 1984, the first attempt to seal the Wilberg mine portal failed when the fire flared up and rising levels of poisonous gas forced evacuation of more than 100 rescuers from the area near the entryway.
Also on Dec. 23, a helicopter carried a sharpshooter armed with a high-powered rifle into the sky above the Wilberg mine property.
The plan called for the sharpshooter to rupture the fuel tank on the generator pumping air into the underground facility.
However, the thick cloud of smoke belching from the portal made it impossible for the sharpshooter to spot the equipment in question.
On Christmas Eve 1984, the sharpshooter fired five rounds into the radiator cooling the diesel engine running the generator.
The engine overheated and stalled, effectively shutting down the generator and stopping the fan circulating air into Wilberg mine.
By Thursday, Dec. 27, 1984, all but two mine shafts were sealed. Officials declined to predict how long it would take for the fire to extinguish and allow recovery teams to retrieve the 27 bodies.
The bodies of the victims killed at Wilberg were not recovered until December 1985, one year after the underground mining disaster occurred.
Initially, officials investigating the December 1984 incident speculated that an overheated bearing on the belt drive at Wilberg’s main entry may have caused the fatal blaze to erupt.
But in 1986, MSHA released the federal agency’s investigation results. The investigation pinpointed an air compressor inside the underground facility as the fire’s source.
Emery Mining employees killed in the 1984 Wilberg disaster included company officials James Hamlin of Price, vice president of operations; and David Bocook, also of Price, mine manager.
The first female worker to die in an accident in the underground coal mining shafts in the Carbon-Emery area was Nannette Wheeler of Castle Dale.
The remaining victims who died in the Wilberg fire included Alex Poulos of Price, Vic Cigolani of Huntington, Leroy Hersh of East Carbon, James Bertuzzi of Castle Dale, Phillip Bell of Orangeville, Lester Walls Jr. of Huntington, Ricci Camberlango of Price, Robert Christensen of Castle Dale, Lee Johansen of Ferron, John Waldoch of Huntington, Lynn Robinson of Ferron, Bert Bennett of Fillmore, Brian Howard of Castle Dale, Randy Curry of Castle Dale, Joel Nevitt of Price, Gordon Conover of Ferron, Robert Ellis of Ferron, Curtis Carter of Huntington, Owen Curtis of Price, Gary Jennings of Huntington, John Wilsey of Orangeville, Kelly Riddle of Ferron and Ray Snow of Ferron. The tragic loss of lives resulting from the December 1984 underground fire at Wilberg rocked the entire Carbon-Emery County mining community.