Twenty-seven miners died in the blaze, whose long burn and dense smoke delayed recovery of the bodies and kept the remains of the last two miners trapped for almost a year. An overheated air compressor was blamed for the fire.
``Time has not dimmed the pain of losing my son, and it never will,'' says Sally Walls, whose son Lester Walls Jr., 23, died in the Wilberg Mine. ``It's the most devastating thing that can ever happen to a parent. It's been 20 years, but the hurt is still there like it was yesterday. It seems like an eternity since I've seen and talked to my son.''
At nearly a mile deep and literally encased in fuel, the Wilberg blaze, reported Dec. 19, 1984, quickly became so hot that the miners trapped a half mile deeper couldn't get out and their would-be rescuers couldn't get in.
The mine, operated by Emery Mining Co. under contract from Utah Power & Light Co., was working to set a longwall mining record when the fire began.
The night of the fire, 28 people - twice the size of the normal crew - were working in pursuit of a 24-hour production record when a fire broke out near the entrance.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration concluded that an air compressor with two defective safety devices started the fire, a theory rejected by Emery Mining and the union.
However, most of the survivors seem to blame the mining company, Utah Power and even the union for worrying so much about setting a record that they turned a blind eye to safety issues.
Utah Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen said commercial mining never resumed in the Wilberg Mine, partly because of fire damage, so the company developed an adjacent area called Cottonwood to supply coal for its Emery County power plant.
Eskelsen said several changes were made in the way coal mines operated, including keeping air compressors in fireproof concrete boxes, using wireless communication and dedicating water lines and tanks to fight fires.
Following a Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee hearing into the fire, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, got the General Accounting Office to investigate the conduct of MSHA regarding the mine and fire.
The GAO report, released in November 1987, cited MSHA for allowing the mine to operate with an outdated firefighting and evacuation plan, to operate with no fire suppression devices and to run a compressor known to be faulty.
Two monuments stand in Emery County to honor the 27 lost miners. One is outside the county courthouse in Castle Dale. The other, an 8-foot slab of granite bearing the etched figures of a male and female miner and the names of the victims, stands on a hillside overlooking the canyon that leads to the mine.
