Martin Muck

* 1967

  • “It was a cross which was mined from the basic wall, and we made a turn to open the wall, which means to the wall corridor. The mining equipment was supposed to be moved there. All of us were in the corner, and we were putting there wooden supports, everything was closed above us, but it was supported about three metres above the iron level where the coal had fallen, and we were finishing putting the wooden supports there and the stop was ready. I was on one edge; my colleague was on another edge and another colleague was on a ladder in the middle where he was adding some wooden supports. And suddenly it sounded, there was a bang and slowly it started to fall. We all stayed on the edges because when something falls in the shaft, it falls in the middle, rarely on the edges. That is why everyone stayed on the edge and the colleague who was in the middle of the wall but actually on the edge stayed there and for some reason I do not understand (because he was) an experienced miner like me, jumped into the middle. As soon as the collapse ended, I started to count people because I was the foreman and I looked for them and started to ask them if they were all right. Everyone answered me but him. And it was a problem and it started. To report it to the controller, to stop all works at that point, everyone rushes to the accident scene, and everything starts to get sorted out, the mine rescue workers from Most are activated and it is underway.”

  • "That ended pretty quickly after that. It started with the miners' snacks, suddenly there were not any. Suddenly, they told you that they would put the deputation in your pay. Slowly they reduced it until you found out you were making the same amount of money as a woman in a bank."

  • “After a month at school, they took everyone to a storehouse and we were issued with all clothes, from socks to winter jackets. Just the students at the Vocational School of Mining, no one else. The seventeen of us were issued with those things every year. They also paid for suits and dancing classes for us. We as students at Vocational School of Mining had everything above standard.”

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    Ústí nad Labem, 25.05.2022

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    délka: 52:17
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It takes at least five years to understand the shaft, it will teach you

Martin Muck in 2013 in Centrum Mine
Martin Muck in 2013 in Centrum Mine
zdroj: witness´s archive

Martin Muck was born on 16 July 1967 in Vansdorf in the area of Děčín. From there, he went to study at the Vocational School of Mining in Meziboří in the area of Most. He started to attend school only several days after the tragic explosion in Pluto Mine where sixty-five miners lost their lives. When he finished vocational school, he started to work in Julius 3 Mine where he worked until the termination of mining there. Subsequently, he transferred to Centrum Mine near Litvínov. He stayed there until its closure in 2015. He then got a job in underground quarrying in the slope below Jezeří Castle in the ČSA surface mine. Underground coal mining ended in the area of Most in 2020. He lived in Most in 2022.