Black Monday

Nobody likes Monday mornings.  Monday mornings are the proverbial realm of hangovers, lethargy and hind-sighting quarterbacks. But the morning of Monday, Nov. 12, 1934, was especially dreadful for a group of workers at Catalina’s East End rock quarry.

Quarry work has always been a hazardous affair. The combination of heavy equipment, explosives and unyielding, unforgiving rock make it one of the most dangerous professions on earth. But in pre-OSHA times and before modern safety rules and regulations, such work  was even more dangerous than it is today.

Back in the 1930s, the East End quarry pretty much served the same purpose that it does today: providing rock and fill material for Southern California port construction projects.  Many of the breakwaters one sees in Southern California, in fact, are made up of Catalina rock from this quarry, including those that protect the waters of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

On the Morning of Nov. 12, 1934, several workers in the employ of Rohl-Connolly (the forerunner of today’s Connolly-Pacific) were busy transferring highly explosive black powder from 25-pound cans into fabric sacks in preparation for the day’s blasting operations.  Once transferred to the sacks, the powder was then taken down into “coyote holes”—small tunnels bored into the rock—to be strategically placed.

By the 1930s, after centuries of dealing with black powder, humans had learned a thing or two about dealing safely with this material. Obviously, neither smoking nor any other kind of open flame was permitted near such operations. But equally important were the precautions taken to avoid any kind of spark, even the seemingly harmless sparks caused by static electricity.

According to the foreman on the job that day, Oscar Larson, all such precautions were in place. “To avoid any friction that might occasion sparks,” Larson told the Catalina Islander newspaper, “we were opening the cans (of powder) with pieces of wood, and all us wore swaddling about our shoes to avoid sparks resulting from our shoes striking rocks.” Larson attested to the fact that there was "no fire nor smoking of any kind" at the site.

But all their precautions failed to stop what happened next. At almost exactly 11:00 a.m., a pickaxe wielded by a nearby worker struck one of the powder cans, sending a spark into the powder.

The explosion was immediate and violent. Flames shot 300 feet into the air and an ugly black cloud of smoke billowed and rolled along the mountainside. Larson, the foreman, barely escaped death by leaping into the ocean after his clothes were ignited.

But eight other men weren’t so lucky.  A 22-year-old man named Marion Hall was killed instantly and seven other men were burned to death in the ensuing conflagration or died later of their injuries.

Incredibly, three men who were in the coyote hole depositing the bags of black powder emerged from their tunnel unscathed.

As soon as the accident was reported, the City of Avalon’s ambulance was dispatched with a number of other motor vehicles. Both Avalon Constable “Tinch” Moricich and Fire Chief Charles Sullivan deputized a number of local men to assist in the rescue work. Within two hours of the accident, a special plane carrying medical personnel landed at the Catalina Airport, which in those days amounted to a seaplane base at Hamilton Cove.

In addition to Hall, the seven other dead and their ages included Kenneth Ernest Smith, 22; Angel Hernandez, 28; Herman Bermudes, 33; Tom Halborson, 51; Manuel Flores, 20; Russell Landers, 49; and Peter Hansen, 56.

Of the eight deceased, two were buried on the Island and six were placed aboard the S.S. Catalina to be removed to the mainland.  High above, as the bodies of the six workers were loaded onto the steamer, the Chimes Tower tolled a number of “appropriate hymns,” according to the Catalina Islander.

To this day, the “Black Monday” explosion at the East End quarry remains the deadliest single-event tragedy in Catalina’s history.