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March 9, 2026 - On March 9, 1976, Blue Diamond Coal’s Scotia mine in Oven Fork, Kentucky, blew up. It was the middle of the day and miners from several rescue teams were called from their shifts and told to gather their gear. They were being sent to Oven Fork in hopes of saving lives. At the time of the blast, more than 100 men were at work in Scotia’s bottom seam. By mid-afternoon, the teams began to arrive amid a scene of confusion. With little information about what had transpired, they had no idea what they might find underground. The best information came from John Hackworth, a Scotia miner who had been about 2,000 feet from the blast. Instead of retreating out of the mine, he had gone forward to see if he could help any survivors.
With federal mine inspectors managing the crisis, mine rescue teams went into the mine and reestablished ventilation to provide enough fresh air to begin exploring. Behind them was Hackworth, who volunteered to shuttle materials in to help with a possible rescue.
The first team in was International Harvester from nearby Benham. Next up was Westmoreland from across the mountain in Virginia. At around 10 p.m., the Westmoreland teams were sent into the section where the men had been working and found the first body.
Replacing them was Lynch’s U.S. Steel team, which found 12 more bodies before they ran out of oxygen. Ray McKinney was on that team and had worked at Scotia just two months earlier until U.S. Steel had offered him a job. Now he was locating the bodies of men he used to work with; he knew every single victim.
Of the 12 miners found by U.S. Steel, six had survived the initial blast and attempted to walk out. Likely overcome by the same bad air that sent John Hackworth back toward the surface, they had retreated into a corner and erected a loose barricade in hopes of holding out until rescuers arrived. About 800 feet straight ahead were the last two bodies.
Sent forward to retrieve them were members of the Beth-Elkhorn #29 team out of Jenkins. Roy McKnight and Lawrence Peavy were working with the locomotive that morning and they died milliseconds before the other 13. They were both big men and Leonard Fleming from the Beth-Elkhorn team remembered how difficult it was to carry them out.
Hear journalist Bill Bishop and historian Brian McKnight interviewed about the Scotia mine disaster by Tom Martin on WEKU’s “Eastern Standard” streaming on esweku.org, WEKU app, Spotify, Apple, NPR.
Nearly 60 hours later, most of the rescuers were home in bed when calls began. Fleming remembered that responding to the first explosion was like “going to your first ball game or something” but “when that second explosion hit … there wasn’t anybody wanting to go in.”
Jim Vicini agreed. “I wasn’t nearly as scared the first time as I was the second.” McKinney told a similar story. As he was riding the mantrip into the mouth of the mine the second time, John Dixon, who was sitting beside him asked, “Do you think they know what they’re doing here?” McKinney responded, “I don’t know how you blow a mine up twice in a week. … It takes a little bit to blow a mine up once.”
When federal authorities arrived on the scene on March 9, the Mine Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA) took control. When the mine blew up the second time, it became MESA’s crisis. Again, teams arrived but it quickly became obvious that entering through the driftmouth was not going to be an option.
The previous year, Scotia had drilled a 13 ½ foot borehole 374 feet deep into the mine at one of its farthest points. The idea was to eventually install an elevator, but by March 1976, it was just a hollow tube providing additional ventilation. The Westmoreland teams were loaded on a bus and taken to Eolia where they first saw the borehole with an old, rickety crane holding a 4-foot square steel basket. Three at a time, inspectors and rescuers were lowered down the hole. Westmoreland rescuers remembered that the crane was missing a tooth so about every 15 feet, it would drop them just enough to scare them nearly to death.
From the bottom of the borehole, Westmoreland rescuers were sent forward in the direction of the second blast. After 2,500 feet, they reached the bodies. The first thing they noticed was the “three federal men … you could see those coveralls, they had reflective material on them.” Then they began looking for the others.
Matt Smith of the Westmoreland team had befriended John Hackworth at the fresh air base after the first explosion and had no idea that he had volunteered to go back underground with the second group to remediate the mine. As they were searching for bodies, Smith saw Hackworth again. “He was right there laying in a supply car. And we had to kind of squeeze between the tracks a little bit … as you went by him. … It was a little lower there. … You had to bend over pretty low with that apparatus on to get by. … But as you’re passing him you’re looking right down and he’s laying on his back. Your face is within about a foot of his. And … to be 23 years old and really never been around death that much … it’s a sight you’ll never forget.”
After mapping the bodies, the teams returned to the borehole. Once back, they began the slow process of being extracted. The last basket up held three Westmoreland men when Bill Clemons, the federal inspector who was in charge at Scotia during both crises, climbed in with them for the ride up. Initially worried about the thin steel cable that separated them from death, they soon realized Clemons was crying. “He cried like a baby all the way up.”
Two days later, MESA decided to seal the mine and the bodies within it. With the Farmington, West Virginia, disaster only eight years earlier and dozens of bodies still underground, families worried they may never get their loved ones back.
The mine remained sealed until mid-November — 243 days — before it was reopened and the bodies finally removed.
In the meantime, life got back to normal for the rescuers who all got to return home to their families, friends and jobs.
The Westmoreland men in Virginia didn’t realize the level of anxiety and frustration felt by the family members whose loved ones were still underground. Suspicious of MESA and Scotia, some of them lashed out at the last men to see the victims. Some Westmoreland rescuers periodically received phone calls accusing them of not really finding the bodies. When investigators finally arrived in November, they found them exactly where they had been mapped with “B.P. 3/11/76” in chalk written overhead on a roof bolt plate. Bill Person, one of the Westmoreland captains, had recorded his initials and the date for posterity.
Twenty-six men died in the explosions leaving behind 25 widows, who joined together in lawsuits. After several years, the suits were settled and most of the families received handsome settlements. Many of the women invested their money in businesses or went to college.
The families of the three federal inspectors only collected life insurance.
A few of the widows struggled. One committed suicide in early 1978; her new husband was arrested but not charged with murder. Another was killed by her next husband in 1984. A few were lucky enough to get out of bad second marriages unscathed.
As for the big picture, the Mine Act of 1977 was the first mine law that came with teeth. Because of the performance of the mine rescue teams, Congress included a provision mandating mines establish rescue teams.
As sad as it is, the three federal inspectors who died in the March 11 explosion did more for coal mine safety than anyone else in American history. Their deaths forced MESA to reorganize and Congress to write a strong law — that’s where the Mine Act came from.
In the five years between the Hurricane Creek tragedy at Hyden in late December 1970 to Scotia in 1976, there were 102 coal mining deaths. After the Mine Act became law, it took until 1984 to reach that number and then until 2006 to reach it again.
Coal mining is significantly safer because of the lives lost — and the work done — from March 9-12, 1976, in Oven Fork, Kentucky.
Victims of the Scotia disaster
 March 9, 1976
Dennis Boggs, 26, Pound, Virginia
Virgil Coots Jr., 23, Cumberland, Kentucky
Earl Galloway, 44, Oven Fork, Kentucky
David Gibbs, 29, Partridge, Kentucky
Robert Griffith, 24, Jackhorn, Kentucky
Larry David McKnight, 27, Cumberland, Kentucky
Roy E. McKnight, 30, Cumberland, Kentucky
Everett Scott Combs Nantz, 28, Cumberland, Kentucky
Lawrence Peavy, 25, Benham, Kentucky
Tommy Ray Scott, 23, Dongola, Kentucky
Ivan Gail Sparkman, 33, Gordon, Kentucky
Jimmy W. Sturgill, 20, Eolia, Kentucky
Kenneth D. Turner, 25, Cumberland, Kentucky
Willie D. Turner, 32, Cumberland, Kentucky
Denver Widner, 31, Blair, Kentucky
March 11, 1976
Glen D. Barker, 29, Partridge, Kentucky
Donald R. Creech, 30, Cumberland, Kentucky
John Q. Hackworth, 29, Cumberland, Kentucky
James B. Holbrook, 43, Millstone, Kentucky
Kenneth Kiser, 45, Coeburn, Virginia
Carl Don Polly, 46, Mayking, Kentucky
Richard Sammons, 55, Auxier, Kentucky
James Sturgill, 48, Eolia, Kentucky
Monroe Sturgill, 40, Whitesburg, Kentucky
Grover Tussey, 45, Allen, Kentucky
James O. Williams, 23, Hindman, Kentucky
More about the Scotia explosions and aftermath
 Appalshop has compiled remembrances of the Scotia disaster on YouTube, including:
Attorney Gerald Stern wrote “The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal,” which was published in 2008.
Former Scotia miner Eddie Nickels has written two books, “Scotia – Coal Mine Of Doom” and “Black Mountain Elegy – The Reminiscences of a Scotia Coal Miner.”
University of Virginia at Wise historian Brian D. McKnight has written a history of the disaster, “The Scotia Mine Explosions of 1976: The Victims, Survivors and Legacy.” McKnight expects the University Press of Kentucky to publish his book in the coming year.
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