The Knox Mine disaster was a mining accident on January 22, 1959, at the River Slope Mine in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania. The disaster occurred when workers were ordered to dig illegally under the Susquehanna River without proper safety precautions, creating a hole in the riverbed which caused the river to flood into the many interconnected mine galleries in the Wyoming Valley between the right-bank (western shore) town of Exeter, Pennsylvania, and the left-bank (eastern shore) town of Port Griffith in Jenkins Township, near Pittston. Twelve miners were killed. Plugging the hole in the riverbed took three days, and mitigation efforts created several new islands between the two towns and altered the western-side flow of the Susquehanna around these. The coal industry in northeastern Pennsylvania had already been in decline at the time of the accident as fuel oil and natural gas became more popular forms of energy. Accident The River Slope Mine, an anthracite coal mine owned by the Knox Coal Company, flooded when coal company management had the miners dig illegally out under the Susquehanna River. Tunneling sharply upwards toward the river bed without having drilled boreholes to gauge the rock thickness overhead, the miners came to a section with a thickness of about — was considered the minimum for safety. The insufficient "roof" cover caused the waters of the river to break into the mine. It took three days to plug the hole in the riverbed, which was done by dumping large railroad cars, smaller mine cars, culm, and other debris into the whirlpool formed by the water draining into the mine. Eventually, an estimated of water filled the mines. Twelve mineworkers died; while 69 others escaped. Amedeo Pancotti was awarded the Carnegie Medal for climbing up the abandoned Eagle Air Shaft and alerting rescuers, which led to the safe recovery of 33 men including Pancotti himself. The bodies of the twelve who died were never recovered, despite efforts to pump the water out of the mine. The victims were Samuel Altieri, John Baloga, Benjamin Boyar, Francis Burns, Charles Featherman, Joseph Gizenski, Dominic Kaveliski, Frank Orlowski, Eugene Ostrowski, William Sinclair, Daniel Stefanides, and Herman Zelonis. The Knox catastrophe was less deadly than the Twin Shaft disaster in Pittston in 1896, which claimed 58 lives. Aftermath and legacy Ten people were indicted in the disaster's aftermath, including the mine superintendent, Robert Dougherty; owner Louis Fabrizio; secret owner August J.