Who was Henry Loutitt?
When the Marianna Mine disaster occurred on Saturday, November 28th, 1908, Henry Louttit was the mine inspector. Louttit had just stepped from the cage of shaft No. 2, according to a local newspaper the Washington Observer, when the explosion happened. Later that day, Louttit was quoted as saying:
"I will not theorize on the cause of this explosion, perhaps after it is all
over and I can sit down and think--think clearly--I may be able to give some
theory to work on. I am absolutely dumbfounded. I had been inspection the
mine all day Friday, at intervals of every half hour. I started in to do the
same thing Saturday and had made several inspections of the mine. I found
some gas there--it is found in all these mines, but there were no
accumulations of gas. I had been all through the mine in the morning and had
not left the workings and came to the surface until the explosion took
place.
"The mine was considered by experts to be the best in the world, it was
the best in the sense that it was supposed to be safe. That is the
fundamental thing about a mine--it's safety for the miners and the
Pittsburg-Buffalo company had this thing in view when its men constructed
this mine. I know that there is an abandoned gas well in the field of this
coal development. But the engineers know these gas fields and the limits of
the gas pools. No part of the mine was within 50 feet radius of the outside
limits of any gas pool.
"In fact I do not know what caused the explosion. But it was a terrific
one. It came with great force. I had just stepped off the cage and started
to make an inspection of the engines. I had intended to go up to the top of
the steel derrick and inspect it. Why I did not go there first instead of
the engines I do not know. Ten minutes later I would have been there and
you know what would have happened to me then. I certainly was fortunate both
coming and going. Had I even thought there was any danger in that mine do
you suppose I would have permitted Thompson and the other men to go on the
cage which brought me up to the surface and as it turned out, to safety." Louttit died 9 years later after the Marianna mine explosion and according to his obituary, he had resigned 2 months after it had occurred, on January 16th, 1909.
October 31, 1917
Louttit would have served as an inspector during several mine disasters in the early 1900s. One of them was the Braznell Mine explosion in 1899 which killed 8 miners, another was the Hazel Kirk Mine No. 2 disaster in 1905 which killed 2 brothers (this same mine, 3 weeks later, an explosion killed 5 workers). There was the Naomi Mine disaster that killed 34 employees in 1907; Louttit was said to have arrived soon after and taken charge of recovering the bodies.
At the age of 13, Louttit entered the mines as a trapper, apparently, and received 25 cents a day. If you want to know more about Louttit, there are a few links below (keep in mind when you come across the name "Francis Feehan" who was elected in 1906 as the District President of the United Mine Workers of America. He was the brother of Mary Ann Feehan Jones, for whom the town of Marianna is named).
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