America's Worst School Disaster

AMERICA’S WORST SCHOOL DISASTER

The New London, Texas School Explosion

On this date, March 18, 1937, the worst disaster to ever occur in a school in American history took place in New London, Texas. The horrific disaster – caused by the cancellation of a $300 a month natural gas bill – claimed the lives of at least 295 students and teachers. It is a catastrophe that the people of Texas will never forget.

New London High School before the disaster

New London was a blue-collar community in the middle 1930s. Even though the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, the local school district was one of the richest in America. Most of the residents of this East Texas town had been drawn there during the late 1920s and early 1930s when jobs dried up in other parts of the country. New London’s oil fields were expanding and offered more jobs than could be filled.

At a time when small, often one-room rural schoolhouses were common, New London had a brand-new school. With the onset of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, community leaders successfully combined state, county and federal funding to build a new, large, one million dollar school complex. The new facilities offered the most up-to-date curriculum for the students, from first grade through high school. It offered the most modern course of studies available, allowing students to choose between vocational and college preparatory courses in the later grades. This kept students in school longer and prepared them for jobs and college when they graduated. The campus became a great source of pride for area parents who had generally only had limited access to education during their own childhoods.

The new school was built on sloping ground and a large dead-air space was located beneath the structure. It would be learned later, during the investigation that followed the disaster, that in spite of the large initial investment in the project, planners had taken many dangerous shortcuts during construction.

The school board had overridden the original architect's plans for a boiler and steam distribution system, instead opting to install 72 gas heaters throughout the building. Early in 1937, the school board canceled their natural gas contract and had plumbers install a tap into the Parade Gasoline Company's residue gas line in order to save money. This practice, while not explicitly authorized by local oil companies, was widespread in the area. The natural gas extracted with the oil was seen as a waste product and was flared off. As there was no value to the natural gas, the oil companies turned a blind eye. This "raw" or "wet" gas varied in quality from day to day, even from hour to hour.

Natural gas in its original state is both odorless and colorless, and because of that any leaks would be undetectable. The odor that most associate with gas today is added as a safety precaution by the commercial companies that sell it. In those days, there was no warning about a leak. Students had been complaining of headaches for some time, but no paid much attention to this. Unknown to everyone, gas had built up inside the crawlspace that ran beneath the entire 253-foot building.

Between 3:05 and 3:20 p.m., on March 18, Lemmie R. Butler, a manual training instructor, turned on an electric sander in one of the school’s vocational workshops. It is believed that the sander's switch caused a spark that ignited the gas-air mixture.

Reports from witnesses stated that the walls of the school actually bulged outwards and the roof lifted off of the building, cartoon-fashion. But this was no cartoon. In seconds, the ceiling came crashing down on the seven hundred children and forty teachers inside. The main wing of the structure collapsed. Flames that were ignited by the explosion quickly died out since the building was fireproof but the strength of the explosion’s concussion and pieces of falling debris instantly killed most of the adults and children inside. The force of the explosion was so great that a two-ton concrete block was thrown clear of the building and crushed a 1936 Chevrolet parked nearby.

Onlookers and volunteers rushed to the site of the deadly explosion

The explosion was its own alarm, heard for miles away. The most immediate response was from a group of mothers who were gathered for a PTA meeting in the cafeteria building, which was about 300 feet from the main building. They helplessly watched as the building collapsed on everyone inside. The women screamed and raced toward the school, digging for hours to reach victims who were alive under the rubble and could be heard screaming for help.

   

Within minutes, area residents started to arrive and began digging through the rubble, many with their bare hands. Roughnecks from the oil fields were released from their jobs and brought with them cutting torches and heavy equipment needed to clear the concrete and steel. A crowd of nearly 10,000 area residents quickly gathered at the site of the explosion, desperate to help. Their cars and pickup trucks clogged the roads and blocked the highways leading in and out of town.

  

Assistance poured in from outside the immediate area. Governor James Allred dispatched Texas Rangers, the state highway patrol, and the Texas National Guard. Thirty doctors, 100 nurses, and 25 embalmers arrived from Dallas. Airmen from Barksdale Field, deputy sheriffs, and even Boy Scouts took part in the rescue and recovery.

  

Most of the dead and injured were children and teachers who had been gathered in the auditorium. Some were rescued and cared for in hospitals as far away as Shreveport, Louisiana. However, hopes of finding more survivors dimmed as the sun began to go down. Illuminated by the powerful lights from the school’s football field, a crowd of grief-stricken parents, relatives, friends and onlookers stood near a lengthening line of bodies covered by white sheets.

  

Most of the bodies were either burned beyond recognition or blown to pieces. One mother had a heart attack and died when she found out that her 16-year-old daughter’s body had been found. Only part of the girl’s face and some of her bones were still intact. Another boy was identified by the pull string from his favorite toy top, found in his jeans pocket.

Rescue and recovery workers worked through the night.

(Below) The charred landscape where the school once stood.

Rescuers worked through the rainy night until, seventeen hours later, the entire site had been cleared. Buildings in the neighboring communities of Henderson, Overton, Kilgore and as far away as Tyler and Longview were converted into makeshift morgues to house the enormous number of bodies, and everything from family cars to delivery trucks served as hearses and ambulances. Mother Frances Hospital in nearby Tyler was scheduled to open the next day, but the dedication was canceled and the hospital opened immediately.

   

Reporters arrived to cover the calamity, but found themselves caught up in the rescue effort. Former Dallas Times Herald executive editor Felix McKnight, then a young Associated Press reporter, recalled, "We identified ourselves and were immediately told that helpers were needed far more than reporters." A 22-year-old reporter named Walter Cronkite also found himself in New London, on one of his first assignments for United Press International. Although he went on to become one of America’s most beloved newsmen, covering everything from World War II to the Kennedy Assassination and Vietnam, he was quoted as saying decades later, "I did nothing in my studies nor in my life to prepare me for a story of the magnitude of that New London tragedy, nor has any story since that awful day equaled it.”

The people of New London recovered as best they could. Not all of the buildings on the school campus had been destroyed. One of the surviving structures, the gymnasium, was quickly converted into multiple classrooms. Inside   tents and the modified buildings, classes resumed ten days later. A new school was completed on the property in 1939.

Families also received an outpouring of support from nearby communities, from people all over Texas, and from well-wishers across American and the world. Adolf Hitler, who was at the time the German Chancellor, paid his respects in the form of a telegram. It remains on display in the New London museum today.

Almost as the dust was still settling in New London, investigations began seeking a cause for the explosion. Experts from the United States Bureau of Mines concluded that the connection to the residue gas line was faulty. It had allowed gas to leak into the school, and since natural gas is invisible and is odorless, the leak was unnoticed. To reduce the danger of future leaks, the Texas Legislature began mandating that thiol, a strong-smelling sulfur compound, be added to natural gas. The practice soon began to be used all over the country.

A group of parents brought a lawsuit against the school district and the Parade Gasoline Company, but the courts ruled that neither could be held responsible. In the aftermath of the disaster, school superintendent W. C. Shaw was forced to resign amidst threats that a lynch party would be sent after him. Sadly, Shaw himself had lost a son in the explosion.

Over the years, the New London School explosion has received relatively little attention given the magnitude of the event. Explanations for this are speculative, but most center around residents' unwillingness to discuss the tragedy. It was a memory that most simply did not want dredged up. In addition, many of the parents left the area in the years that followed since most were transient oil workers. Another reason for the lack of attention was believed to be the overshadowing effect of the Hindenburg disaster, which happened two months later.

The school disaster remains a haunting memory in New London, even after all of these years. Many questions remain unanswered, even the exact number of those who died in the blast. It may actually be much higher than the nearly 300 that has been estimated over the years. Many of those killed were the children of temporary residents, oilfield workers who moved from one place to another, depending on what work was available. It’s believed that some of these “roughnecks” may have collected the bodies of their children after the disaster and returned them to be buried near their respective homes.

The true magnitude of this disaster may never be known.

The story of the New London school disaster appears (with numerous others) in the book AND HELL FOLLOWED WITH IT by Troy Taylor & Rene Kruse. The book is available in a print edition from the website and also as a Kindle and Nook edition.

The Utah Horror

THE UTAH HORROR

The 1924 Castle Gate Mine Disaster

On the morning of March 8, 1924, 171 men walked into the Castle Gate No. 2 mine in Utah’s Willow Creek Canyon. Mining in those days was still a hard, brutal and dangerous job but for the most part, it paid well and the men were happy to have their jobs. Most of them were smiling when they headed for work that morning, but within hours, their happiness would turn to horror.

What happened on that day in March is still regarded as one of the worst disasters in Utah mining history. Scores of men lost their lives and according to the stories that followed in the wake of the explosions that shook the mine that day, many of their spirits remained behind as a reminder of the lives that were lost.

For well over a century, steam kept this country moving. In a way it still does: Until the 1920s and 1930s, steam ran just about everything -- tractors, trains, ships, industrial machines, and even some cars. Steam provided the power and boiling water provided the steam but it was coal that kept all that water boiling. Coal also kept people warm in their homes and fired the giant steel mills that helped make our country the industrial powerhouse that it was.

Coal was king, and the digging of the stuff made some men rich as kings. Coal provided meager livings for hundreds of thousands of men and boys, and fabulous wealth for a few. With all the money there was to be made in the coal industry, it is not difficult to believe that many business men wanted to become involved with that lucrative prospect. Coal was the original “black gold.”

During the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth, coal mines were opened all over the country. Although ten states provide ninety percent of the coal in the U.S., at least 27 states had (and still have) active coal mines. Early on, it seemed that coal couldn’t be pulled from the ground fast enough, but as we moved through the early decades of the twentieth century, the coal boom was starting to decline. The coal industry had moved into a period of over-expansion and over-production. Too many mines had been opened and mining technology allowed for more coal to be pulled from those mines. It wasn’t just men with picks and horse drawn coal carts anymore. Other forms of energy, such as gasoline and diesel fuels, were being introduced and used. The automobile was firmly established as the newest and most popular mode of transportation. 

The result was decreased orders for coal from mines all over the country. Coal certainly wasn’t hearing its death toll, as many billions of tons were still being produced, but some mines were hit harder than others.  Some mines shut down temporarily and others reduced their work force. Such was the situation in March of 1924 in east central Utah. 

The Castle Gate mines took their name from this unusual rock formation, resembling a castle spire, at the entrance to Price Canyon. 

A reduction in orders for coal meant layoffs and closings. Utah Fuel Company’s Castle Gate Mines were no exception. Although Castle Gate had not decided which mines it needed to close, it furloughed many of its miners. To keep as many families in the area fed as possible, they laid off young, single miners and those without dependents and even hired some married family men who had been laid off when area mines had temporarily shut down. The miners knew the Castle Gate Mines were known for being dangerous, but they were happy to have jobs. Two weeks later, disaster struck.

Castle Gate Mine No. 1 opened in 1886 in Willow Creek Canyon, 90 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. It was named for a unique rock formation at the entrance to Price Canyon. Initially, boxcars were used to bring in the first miners, who used them as their homes until the boxcars were needed elsewhere.  Then, the company put the men up in tents until suitable housing could be built. After the first few houses were completed, the makeup of the Castle Gate began shifting from single immigrant and American-born men to more families.  The town of Castle Gate was incorporated in 1912, the same year the second mine was opened. Castle Gate No. 2 was located on the opposite side of the canyon, one mile apart from the No. 1 mine.

Castle Gate Mine No. 1 had reasonably good coal quality, which was baked into coke for smelting plants to use in the production of steel. But when No. 2 was opened, the coal was of supreme quality, some of the best in the state, or even the region. This coal was destined for use in steam locomotives and steamboats. In 1922, Castle Gate Mine No. 3 opened and coal production went into full swing.

All three Castle Gate mines had been running smoothly with rotating shifts. For two weeks, some new men had been working together after many had been laid off and others hired. It was very unusual for such a high percentage of the miners to be married with children, but the company was trying to do right by the family men. And so, when 171 men walked into Castle Gate Mine No. 2 bright and early on Saturday morning, March 8, 1924, they were happy to be there and grateful to have jobs. It would not be long before their happiness would turn to terror.

A check board was positioned next to the entrance of each mine. On the board were a series of tiny hooks with small brass number plates hanging from them. As every miner walked into the mine to work, he would take in with him the brass plate bearing the number he had been assigned. This system was used to keep track of who was in the mine and who was not. If a man’s number plate was gone from its hook, he was in the mine. It was a simple, commonly used system that had been adopted by many mine companies. As each man passed into the mine on that Saturday, he carried with him his brass number plate.

Inside the mine, the men walked down deep below the surface into rooms where different groups would be removing the coal that the shift before them had knocked loose. The coal mined in Castle Gate No. 2 was very brittle. The new “short wall” mechanical equipment that they had been using to dig out the coal created a large amount of coal dust when it was used with brittle coal. This mine had a sprinkler system to dampen down the dust, but it had not been sufficient to keep the dust down that day. Consequently, when the men went to work that day, the air and floors were heavy with light, fluffy black powder. In some mines, the men had to work hunched over because the room and tunnel ceilings were so low. In No. 2, however, the coal seams were very deep and wide, allowing for the ceilings in some rooms to be as high as 12 to 16 feet. 

Two of the men were loading coal in Room 2, about 7,000 feet from the entrance. This room was known to have some of the poorest safety conditions in the mine, and it had with a particularly high ceiling. A few minutes before 8:00 that morning, the fire boss working Room 2 climbed up to investigate a pocket of gas at the ceiling. As he did so, his open carbide head lamp went out. He stopped to relight the lamp with a match, and in doing so, he ignited a deadly combination of explosive gas and coal dust. The force of the explosion that followed was monstrous. 

The blast roared up the drift and burst out the entrance of the mine with such tremendous force that it tossed railcars about as if they were toys. One mining car, several telephone poles and some heavy equipment near the entrance were thrown across the valley to the other side of the canyon, nearly a mile away. The steel gates inside the drift near the entrance were twisted and ripped free, tearing the heavy hinges from their concrete foundations. These gates were also blasted across the valley and were found embedded in the rock of the opposite canyon wall. The damage inside the mine was as bad, if not worse. Heavy support timbers were ripped out and the steel rails were twisted like so much string.

           

A few minutes later, a second explosion burst through the mine. This time, the force of the blast was directed in a different direction, nearly destroying the fan house and leaving the fan itself extensively damaged. It was supposed that the force of the first explosion likely extinguished the carbide headlamps of the miners working in the other rooms. Plunged into utter darkness, it would not have been long before someone tried to re-light his own headlamp with a match, which set off the second explosion. This explosion was the one that likely killed any of the miners who had survived the initial blast. It is quite likely there were survivors, as the energy from the first explosion was directed outward. Even if there had been no second explosion, it does not necessarily follow that these men would have come out of the mine alive. The first explosion would have rapidly burned off most of the oxygen in the mine and “afterdamp” would have been left behind. Afterdamp is made up of hot toxic gasses left behind after the explosive gasses and the coal dust had burned, mixed in with a large amount of carbon dioxide - a lethal combination. 

The catastrophe was not yet complete. About 20 minutes after the second explosion, the earth shook one last time as a third, spontaneous explosion detonated. This final explosion did extensive internal damage to the mine. The first and second explosions had blown out many of the timber roof support beams, allowing the third explosion to cause extensive collapses and cave-ins throughout the mine. 

Family members and off-duty miners knew exactly what must have happened as the earth below them shook. They ran directly to No. 2, trying to get as close to the entrance as they could. The bosses set their emergency plan into action by calling the area mines to let them know what had happened. Trained rescuers would be arriving within the half hour. 

Every mine had its own trained rescue teams and rescue equipment on hand. If ever there was a fire, explosion, or cave-in within any of the area mines, these rescue teams would be immediately alerted and sent to the mine in distress. The men on these teams were all miners themselves and very often when the call for help went out, they would be called out of their own mines. No matter what mine was in trouble or what company owned the mine, help would always be on the way when needed. No matter how bad the situation appeared when the rescuers arrived on the scene, they always went to work believing that there would be living men trapped inside. Unfortunately, when they arrived at the No. 2 Mine, they had no way of knowing how many men were inside at the time of the explosion. The check board containing that information was blasted into splinters and brass tags were blown all over the valley with the first blast.

The first men to enter the mine after the third explosion were 22-year-old Thomas Hilton of Helper, Utah, and two other men. Hilton, who later spent over 55 years working coal mines, had just been certified in mine rescue and first aid and had been laid off from No. 2 two weeks earlier. The men needed to get to the water shut-off valve for the eight-foot water line leading into the mine. There were worries that if the line had burned through, men could possibly drown if they were holed up in a low-lying room. Wearing breathing helmets, the men entered the mine while holding a rope so they could be pulled out in case they were overcome with gas. They were able to get as far as 100 yards but were only about halfway to the water valve. Hilton began feeling dizzy. He jerked his lifeline to signal that he was in trouble and turned toward the exit. After walking a short distance, his legs began to feel unstable and he began to run. In sight of the exit, he collapsed into unconsciousness. Two company managers who were holding the lifelines, covered their mouths with wet handkerchiefs and ran in and dragged Hilton out. The next thing he knew, he was lying in the Castle Gate cemetery, propped up against a tombstone, breathing clean fresh air. 

Hilton took some time to recover and then headed back to continue with the rescue effort. The rescue team leaders were careful to keep him away from the area where his father had been working until after his father’s body was removed. Hilton lost his father, an uncle, a cousin and other relatives in the blast. 

The afterdamp in the mine was tremendously thick and there was no way to get it cleared; the force of the explosions had collapsed the airshafts and the ventilation fan was all but destroyed. The rescue teams were in possession of the latest emergency equipment in the forms of breathing helmets. These would allow the rescuers to work for fifteen minutes or more in areas saturated with afterdamp. But in this case, the afterdamp was so extreme that even with rescue helmets, the men were being overcome and frequently had to be dragged from the mine. 

Of the 171 men who walked into the mine that Saturday morning, there were no survivors. Then the mine took one more life. George Wilson of Standardville, the head of the rescue crew, was in the first group to enter the mine. These men went in on Saturday afternoon, knowing full well that there had been no opportunity to ventilate the mine. They were focused on finding any trapped miners that could still be saved. It was believed that Wilson’s breathing apparatus had somehow malfunctioned or that the device shielding his nose had slipped. Within the first 100 yards, he fell to the mine floor, asphyxiated from the toxic afterdamp. The other five men on his team also collapsed and had to be pulled from the mine. They were all unconscious but all but Wilson were later revived. The afterdamp was too strong even for the rescue breathing helmets. 

Repair work had begun on the giant fan but it could not be put back into service before Sunday afternoon.  Helmeted teams repeatedly tried to enter the mine but were turned back by the heavy afterdamp. Eventually, efforts to enter the mine were stopped until the fan could be repaired the following day. In the meantime, miners worked at and around the entrance, laboring to remove as much debris as they could, but their efforts were hampered by the massive crowd that had developed on the road leading to the mine. Police and mine officials were tasked with trying to push the crowd back so the others could work more efficiently. On Sunday, Utah National Guardsmen were called in for crowd control, and they were eventually able to move the crowd back down the road. After that, no one was allowed up to the mine unless they were known rescuers, had proper credentials, or were from the press. 

A special train arrived at 3:00 p.m. at Castle Gate from Salt Lake City with five doctors and many nurses.  With rescue and medical personnel in place, the Red Cross quickly arrived to help care for the families of the miners. They were provided with much-needed supplies and food, and with volunteers to help with such mundane household chores as child care, cooking and cleaning because many of the miners’ wives were too distraught to function normally. Mothers and wives of the entombed miners did little more than stand silently and sadly, looking toward the mine.

Saturday night, a helmeted crew was able to penetrate the mine as far as 500 feet, but no bodies were found. Later that night, another helmeted crew made it as far as 1,000 feet, but found no one, and no evidence of anyone left alive. 

Sunday, March 9, started with great expectations. The fan was to be repaired and would begin ventilating the mine, making it easier and safer for the rescue crews to do their work. Those high expectations were dashed that afternoon as a fire broke out in an emergency exit and rescuers were once again evicted from the mine for several hours until the fire could be extinguished. While the fire burned, there were more cave-ins in the main entrance, dropping tons of debris that would have to be cleared out before the operation could get underway once again. A further hindrance was a bitterly cold wind that blew steadily throughout Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Bonfires were built to help keep the teams warm.

Several more rescuers were overcome by the gas and had to be hauled out, but there were no more deaths. As an added precaution against gasses, where the afterdamp was not visibly present, the rescuers took caged canaries in with them. That was an old miner’s trick for detecting many types of hazardous gasses, primarily carbon dioxide. The gasses would affect the birds long before the humans, so when a miner would see that his canary had fallen dead, he knew that it was time to leave quickly.

After the fire was out, the first ten bodies were found and gently carried from the mine. Horribly charred and mutilated, it was instantly evident that these men had been killed instantly. Soon after, two more bodies were found, headless and badly charred, it was impossible to identify them immediately. About 6:00 p.m., twenty more bodies had been located but the recovery team was unable to reach them before much debris was moved. All but the faintest of hopes of finding anyone alive were lost. The afterdamp had penetrated even the farthest reaches of the mine and it continued to hamper the men recovering the bodies. As more of the mine was being ventilated, and they ventured deeper into the mine, the helmeted workers would locate and carry the bodies to an area that had been cleared of the afterdamp, and pass them on to miners without need of breathing helmets. Then, with the aid of horses, the bodies would be carried to the surface.

When the rescuers accepted the fact that none of the miners were coming out alive, rescue shifted to recovery. They needed to find a place to store the remains and to make identifications. The Knights of Pythias Hall was used as a morgue and all the remains were then taken there and placed gently on the floor, with any clothing or belongings that were found near the bodies. Undertakers from area towns flooded in to assist in preparing the bodies for burial. The company had already sent out a mass order for coffins, to be delivered within a few days. 

 A group of children who lost their fathers in the explosion

It took nine days to recover all 172 bodies. Mass funerals were conducted and burials took place in three cemeteries: Price, Helper and the largest number in the Castle Gate cemetery. One man, who was found headless, had to be dug up so his head could be put in the coffin after it was found several days later. On March 24, the sorrowful sound of “Taps” was heard echoing through the canyon as long funeral processions carried dozens of coffins to their final resting places. 

Death benefits were paid by the newly established Utah State Workmen’s Compensation Fund. Each dependent received $5,000 over time, with payments of $16 per week for five years. Several of the very young continued receiving payments well past the five-year cutoff. The company cancelled all of these families’ debts to the company store and gave them ample time to find other lodgings. Governor Charles Mabey used the national press to plead for donations to be sent to help the families. He raised an additional $132,445.13. He then hired a social worker to work with the families to determine how the money would be delegated. 

The Castle Gate No. 2 mine was cleaned, rebuilt and reopened. Coal was pulled from No. 2 until it was closed down for good on February 4, 1960, the same day that Castle Gate No. 4 was opened. 

The mine and the land around it have changed hands several times, with different parcels sold separately.  The land under the town of Castle Gate remained company land until it was sold in 1974.

The town was dismantled and some of the houses were moved to nearby Helper. The remaining 200 Castle Gate residents were relocated to 60 newly built homes in the new Castle Gate subdivision, later absorbed into Helper. The remainder was bulldozed, leaving not the least hint that there ever was a town there. 

Castle Gate is officially listed as a Utah “ghost town” but the truth is that there is nothing much left to see there; just level, graded ground. There are still several of the old mining buildings left from No. 2, but they have fallen into disrepair. At some point over the years, the old mine wheelhouse had a sinister local nickname of The Devil’s Playhouse attached to it, but no one around seems to remember how or why it came to be called that. But they do stay away -- just in case. 

Hopefully most of the miners who died so suddenly and violently that day have gone on to their rest, but at least a handful of the miners who went back to work in No. 2 after the disaster believed that some of the spirits of the dead remained in the mine. The cleanup and rebuilding was all done by experienced miners who knew how to put a mine back together. As they went about their work, they found little mementos and reminders of their lost colleagues mixed in with the rubble. On a few occasions, they were reminded by their friends themselves! Most of the men believed that their old friends were trying to protect them as they did their work, more than once whispering a warning or giving a slight shove that kept them from being harmed by falling rocks or timbers. Although frightening when it happened, none of the miners regretted the protection. 

The story of the Castle Gate Mine (and many others disasters) appears in the book A PALE HORSE WAS DEATH by Troy Taylor and Rene Kruse. It’s available in a print edition from the website or as a Kindle and Nook edition.