The Ballad of Clairton: An All-American City in Mourning

        CLAIRTON, Pennsylvania — Richard Lattanzi started his morning on Aug. 11 getting ready to take his father to his doctor’s appointment at Jefferson Hospital on Coal Valley Road in nearby Jefferson Hills, Pennsylvania.

        Within hours, the hospital would receive trauma victims from a series of explosions at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works. The former steelworker and mayor of Clairton for the past 16 years would stand in front of the plant, comforting members of the community and waiting for word on how many men had lost their lives that day.

        Lattanzi proudly said that Clairton has been his home his entire life, a statement everyone who lives here through good times and bad will repeat without pause. This is their home and this is their community, where they work either in the steel industry or in the businesses that support it, from the Speedway to the local barber shop; it is where their parents worked and often where they worked, including Lattanzi.

        “I worked in the mill for 30 years,” he says, pointing toward the Irvin Works, 5 miles down the Monongahela River. It’s part of the three plants, including the Edgar Thomson Works Plant in Braddock, that comprise the U.S. Steel Mon Valley Works family, which has built this country for over 150 years.

        The region’s identity with steel is profound. It’s in their culture; hundreds of large and small companies have steel in their names. Steel means hard work, their legacy of building things with their hands. It is in the region’s sports. The skyline of Pittsburgh is home to U.S. Steel’s headquarters, the tallest building in Appalachia.

        Lattanzi was at Jefferson Hospital around 10:30 a.m. in the parking lot getting out of his vehicle when he got an alert on his phone.

        “My dad has a walker, and I get a 911 alert for an ambulance call. And it said something to the effect that all emergency vehicles dispatch to 400 State Street, which is the mill. It was probably two, three minutes later that I got a text from one of my constituents saying, ‘Hey, mayor, there was some type of loud explosion, maybe from the mill, but my house just shook,'” he said.

        Soon, scores of phone calls and texts flooded his phone.

        “Everybody knew that it wasn’t just an explosion, that it was something bad. And then I saw that shortly after that, they basically said something about catastrophic or casualties, and they need all units there,” he said.

        His father and he switched duties, with his father dropping him off at the plant.

        “I jumped in my vehicle. You could hear ambulances, fire trucks and emergency vehicles from all over Allegheny County. I mean, it was a heck of a show. There were so many emergency vehicles down there. It was unbelievable,” he explained.

        Online, prayers were offered not just from the community but also from Pittsburgh. The workers at the other plants at Edgar Thomson and Irvin Works all started prayer lines. Pretty soon, the entire country was waiting for news, any news, as to what the situation was and how bad the casualties were.

        In 2010, 20 people were injured during maintenance work that led to an explosion.

        Last year, data compiled by World Steel showed 67 fatalities in the industry globally, the lowest on record. The steel industry is making significant strides in safety. However, the goal of zero harm for employees and contractors is the standard for an industry that carries significant risk to workers who deal with extreme heat, heavy equipment and chemicals every day to improve our lives.

        That worldwide number of 67 for 2024 is significantly lower than what used to occur in the industry; in one year alone, between 1906 and 1907, 195 steelworkers died in work accidents here in Allegheny County.

        Lattanzi worked the line as a steelworker for 30 years at the Irvin Works in nearby West Mifflin. The 61-year-old mayor said he loved the job and the city he governs because of everything it stands for.

        “Clairton has always been a mill town, and the mill was the reason why the city of Clairton was built for the mill workers and the bosses. The mill has always been a good community partner,” he said.

        He is not, however, by any stretch of the imagination, looking at it through rose-colored glasses.

        “There’s been some ups and downs with a little bit of pollution, and there’s some people that are over the top on that. But you’re talking about a hundred-year-old mill and U.S. Steel’s willingness to make improvements, which was why the Nippon deal was so important,” he said of the recent deal between the two steel powerhouses finalized in June.

        Lattanzi said U.S. Steel and the city of Clairton are intertwined.

        “We are a large extended family, and people have a warm, heartfelt feeling for steelworkers because we’ve always known that going to work every day, there is no guarantee you’re coming home the way you came in to work,” he said.

        Lattanzi said it has always been dangerous, and anything can go wrong at any time.

        “You’re dealing with high heat, you’re dealing with chemicals, you’re dealing with gases and explosions. So yeah, you always knew that anything can happen at any time. It was just a question of minimizing those chances.”

        Steelworkers are seen as the firefighters of industry in that they take a risk every day by walking into the plant to do their job, Lattanzi explained.

        He stands at the gate, and everybody at the plant knows him. He’s been the mayor now for 16 years: People shake his hand, he reaches for an embrace, they talk about prayer, several guys tell him they were supposed to be in the spot where the explosion left two men dead and several in critical condition.

        “They told me God spared them, and I could tell they didn’t know what to make of that,” he explained.

        Lots of folks made their way to the gates on Aug. 11, Lattanzi explained. Most were out of goodness and concern; others were just rubberneckers looking to see what was going on.

        As of Aug. 13, 10 people were injured from the blast inside a battery operating area at the plant, officials said. At least five of the injured were released from the hospital, according to officials.

        Nearly 50 years ago, the city of Clairton was the backdrop for the movie “The Deer Hunter,” which depicted the impact of the Vietnam War on a group of lifelong friends in a working-class steel town. What endures from that movie is the connective tissue the men and women have with each other, much of it centered on their livelihoods at the mill.

        The city exists solely because of the U.S. Steel mill that was built here over 100 years ago. Over the decades, it grew and thrived into a tidy middle-class city known for its Friday night high school football games, bustling main street business district, churches and hardworking men and women.

        Its population peaked in the 1950s when workers moved toward Jefferson Hills as their lives became more prosperous.

        Lattanzi said Clairton is a true American city.

        “It was built on the backs of hardworking men and women who took a risk every day coming into the plant. We were reminded of that risk today, and we should remember those workers as unsung heroes.”

        Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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