December 30th marks the 52nd anniversary of one of the terrible mine disasters in our Appalachian history. Amy Pennington Brudnicki is a native of Hyden, Kentucky, and has kindly accepted our request to write about the explosion and aftermath that hit her hometown. Here is Amy’s account:
Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster
December 30th, 1970, began as any other day in the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky. On this morning, a group of hardworking miners started their day before the sun came up. They’d never see another sunrise. Shortly after noon, disaster struck when the Finley Coal Mine – located on Hurricane Creek in Hyden, Kentucky – exploded, killing all thirty-eight men inside.
The lone survivor, A.T. Collins, was about to enter the mine when the explosion occurred. The blast pelted him with debris, ripping his clothing and tearing the watch from his wrist. Lucky to be alive, he was left battered and bruised – blown some sixty feet from the mine’s entrance.
In the seventies, when the disaster occurred, all homes on Hurricane Creek that had phone service were on a party line – one phone line shared by many households. My aunt, who was visiting from Alabama, was on the phone with her husband when the officials from the mine came on the phone stating that they needed her to clear the line, that the mine had blown up.
I can only imagine the chill that she experienced when she heard those words because I know she felt the explosion shake the house. My Granny’s house, where she was visiting, was just around the bend from the mines.
Thirty-eight men went underground that fateful day – miners who labored hard, day in and day out, for the families they loved. As darkness fell, those men – the husbands, fathers, grandfathers, uncles, sons, friends, and neighbors – didn’t return home.
Lives were forever changed. Routines were forever changed. And hearts were forever broken. The wife who watched everyday as her husband approached the door with coal dust covering his face and a lunch bucket in his hand, she had become a widow. The children who waited for daddy to tuck them in at night, their world had fallen apart. And the mother who had to bury her son- I can’t even imagine her pain. In the blink of an eye, devastation struck these families . . . and the effects are still felt to this day.
In 2011, a memorial was completed on Hurricane Creek in honor of the thirty-eight men who lost their lives on December 30th, 1970. They are the true unsung heroes of Appalachia . . . ~ Amy
Amy is also the admin for the Facebook page dedicated to the memory of the miners who were lost that day. You can check it out at the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Memory-of-the-1970-Finley-Coal-Mine-Disaster/107344462639601