I’m sure everyone saw the headline about the rescue of the miners, but this was at the bottom of the page:
““I worked that old mine in the 50’s,” said Joe Jashienski, an 89-year-old retired union organizer who watched the rescue efforts from his house here on Schoolhouse Road. “And I remember the last day when it closed they had us working overtime to mine one last big stretch, digging out an extra-huge hole, a hell of a chamber that I’ll bet never was put on anyone’s maps.”
Mr. Jashienski said this final excavation "left an underground room the size of a ball field" that only old-timers like himself knew was down there. "I told one of the miners I know working in the new mine to be on the lookout for that old ball field," Mr. Jashienski said, convinced it contributed to the flooding of the year-old Quecreek mine. The authorities said that the precise cause of the flood would be investigated. Safety regulations require 200 feet of solid rock to surround newly excavated mines, but officials noted that older mine maps often proved inexact.”
