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Knox Mine disaster

1959 disasters in the United States1959 in Pennsylvania1959 mining disastersAnthracite Coal Region of PennsylvaniaCoal mining disasters in Pennsylvania
Disasters in PennsylvaniaEngineering failuresHistory of Luzerne County, PennsylvaniaJanuary 1959 events in the United States
Knox Mine Flood area from USMSHA report
Knox Mine Flood area from USMSHA report

The Knox Mine disaster was a mining accident on January 22, 1959, at the River Slope Mine in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania. The disaster occurred when workers were ordered to dig illegally under the Susquehanna River without proper safety precautions, creating a hole in the riverbed which caused the river to flood into the many interconnected mine galleries in the Wyoming Valley between the right-bank (western shore) town of Exeter, Pennsylvania, and the left-bank (eastern shore) town of Port Griffith in Jenkins Township, near Pittston. Twelve miners were killed. Plugging the hole in the riverbed took three days, and mitigation efforts created several new islands between the two towns and altered the western-side flow of the Susquehanna around these. The coal industry in northeastern Pennsylvania had already been in decline at the time of the accident as fuel oil and natural gas became more popular forms of energy.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Knox Mine disaster (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Knox Mine disaster
River Road, Jenkins Township

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Wikipedia: Knox Mine disasterContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 41.308 ° E -75.823 °
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Address

River Road

River Road
18643 Jenkins Township
Pennsylvania, United States
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Knox Mine Flood area from USMSHA report
Knox Mine Flood area from USMSHA report
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