Central

Centralia No. 5

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Centralia No. 5 Shannon M. Flakes Dr. Phillip R. Neely, Jr. PAD 500 Modern Public Administration April 18, 2012

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Introduction The layers of bureaucracy created a group of administrators that were out of touch with those that they were hired to protect. Rather than focusing on results that created change, they focused on meetings and memos that essentially did nothing but create a paper trail that lead to a disaster. In the case of the Centralia #5 Mine, failure to act was responsible for the death of 111 men, the widowing of 79 women and leaving 76 children under the age of 18 without a Father. History On March 25, 1947, in Centralia, Illinois, the explosion of the Centralia #5 Mine resulted in the death of 111 hardworking men. Most of these men dedicated their lives to the Bell & Zoller Coal Company mining coal at the company’s Centralia #5 Mine. This group of men attempted on numerous occasions to get help from agencies and elected officials that were expected to protect them. The miners found this group of people completely out of touch. The agencies and elected officials wrongly thought that writing reports and having meetings would solve a problem or make it go away by itself. Others seemed unwilling to help them for fear of the loss of their own jobs or political status. Identify and explain four (4) logistical alternatives Scanlan could have addressed. In 1941, Illinois Governor Dwight Green appointed Robert Medill as director of the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals. “This same year, the governor also appointed Driscoll Scanlan, whom was recommended by his state representative, as one of the states 16 mine inspectors” (Martin, 1948). Scanlan was the inspector of the district that included Centralia

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Mine No. 5. Scanlan inspected the mine several times in the years before the explosion. At the end of each inspection he sent his report to the Illinois Department of Mines and...