Historical marker for Marshalls Creek explosion to be unveiled Monday

The ringing phone didn’t wake Bob Huffman, but the blast a few minutes later shook the neighborhood awake.

He was a young Marshalls Creek firefighter then, on June 26, 1964, when three of his colleagues were killed in a truck explosion on Route 209.

The driver had pulled off the road after two tires blew out, leaving his cargo of blasting caps and explosives unattended while he found a phone and called his employer. A fire spread from the tires.

There were no hazardous materials placards on the trailer. The firefighters didn’t know what they were approaching.

When it exploded, firefighters F. Earl Miller, Leonard Mosier and Edward Hines were killed. Three passersby also died: John Regina, a Marshalls Creek resident; Joseph J. Horvath Jr., a truck driver from Scranton who was passing by; and Lillian Paesch, a Baltimore woman who was also passing by.

In December 2022, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission announced that it had approved a historical marker for the explosion. The marker will be dedicated Monday at Regina Farms, which is across from where the explosion occurred. The business is owned by Ed Regina, John Regina’s brother.

From 2012: Marshalls Creek blast of '64: Regina family mourns life, livelihood lost

Huffman’s parents — knowing that a barn fire had kept him up until 8 or 9 a.m. June 25 — didn’t wake him when the phone rang shortly after 4 a.m. June 26. (There was no dispatch center then; firefighters were notified of incidents through a phone tree.)

“And then all of a sudden the thing blew. And when it blew, it blew me out of bed,” he recalled earlier this year. “Here I am, more than a mile away.”

He drove to the devastating scene. “All three fireman had closed-casket funerals, because there was nothing left,” he said.

Huffman remembers how quiet the scene was. “No birds. No knee deeps. No screeching tires. No cars. No nothing. Dead. Silence. I mean, it was really eerie,” he said. “You heard a couple fires burning. But other than that, you didn't hear anything.”

A few days later, Rep. Fred Rooney told his House colleagues that “nothing I saw as a member of the armed forces during World War II was more terrible and more tragic than the scenes of devastation and havoc which resulted” from the explosion.

Rooney called for “a thorough review of existing laws governing the shipment of explosives on public highways.”

Ten years later, Congress passed the 1974 Transportation Safety Act, which included a provision that “any vehicle transporting hazardous material must be clearly marked,” said Holly Dennis, the community and municipal projects coordinator for Middle Smithfield Township.

The approval from the PHMC came after five years of work by the township’s historical commission, for which Dennis is the liaison. The first application got rejected, but the second attempt was bolstered by documents that the offices of U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright and then-state Rep. Rosemary Brown helped the township find, Dennis said.

The tragedy is also commemorated with a memorial at the Marshalls Creek Fire Company on Marshalls Creek Road.

This will be the second state historical marker for Marshalls Creek, where a mastodon skeleton was found in 1968.

This article originally appeared on Pocono Record: Historical marker will commemorate devastating 1964 blast in Poconos