Explosion at East Pennsylvania Coal Mine Kills 1
TREMONT, PENNSYLVANIA – An explosion Monday in an eastern Pennsylvania coal mine killed at least one person, officials said. “We have one confirmed fatality,” said Kurt Knaus, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. “I believe it is a recovery and not a rescue operation.”
He said the blast happened at the R&D Coal Co. anthracite mine in Schuylkill County, about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
Eastern Pennsylvania has the nation’s only deposits of anthracite, a type of hard, relatively clean-burning coal that once heated millions of homes but now represents a tiny sliver of the U.S. coal industry.
The mines still operating are typically small with only a few miners.
