(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today the Sun-Gazette offers the next installment in a weekly history series that tells the stories of those who came before us.)

The recent freeze has been remarkably frigid with temperatures in the single digits, but the cold spell seems minimized when compared to reports from exactly a century ago when record lows left people all over the Northeast, including Williamsport, worried about their dangerously dwindling coal supplies.

Headlines called it a fuel famine together with ominous words such as “dire” and “urgent.”

The situation was so far-reaching that local and national updates on the shortage shared the front page with World War I — a war that had been raging for over three years.

‘Unusual severity’

The shortage happened gradually, and then suddenly as the result of a frigid December.

“Williamsport will long remember the month of December 1917 because of its unusual severity,” according to the Gazette and Bulletin, a forerunner to the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.

The article that ran in early January 1918 said the month before it had been the most frigid December in 23 years. Nearly two dozen inches of snow fell on the city that month.

Records in lowest, coldest highs and the average of the two were all topped for four days in a row beginning on Dec. 30, 1917, said Aaron Tyburski, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in State College.

On Dec. 31, 1917, Williamsport dropped to a low of minus 8 degrees and a high of 9 degrees. One hundred years later, that date saw a low of 4 and a high of 18 degrees.

On Jan. 1, 1918, temperatures reached a low of minus 7 and a high of 14 and, in comparison, Jan. 1 of the current year saw temperatures dropping to a low of 3 and a high of 22.

The shortage spreads

Cities in New England were the first to mark coal shortages. Philadelphia also was affected early. But first reports of the shortage reaching the rest of Pennsylvania were published in late December 1917.

A headline that ran on Dec. 28, 1917, read: “Coal region residents hit by fuel shortage.”

Local dealers in Clearfield, a heavy bituminous coal region at the time, were finding it “impossible” to catch up with orders, the article said.

When The Associated Press reported on Dec. 29, 1917, that both Ohio and New York also were in need of fuel, pressure on the supervisor of the Federal Fuel Administration, Harry A. Garfield, got serious.

Getting worse

Things escalated in every affected area after the new year. The first riots happened in New York on Jan. 2, 1918.

“With another day of bitter cold and intense suffering from general fuel shortage, New York had its first real coal riot,” according to the Gazette and Bulletin.

Several hundred people lined up outside a coal yard, tipped over rail cars holding coal and started stoning windows, the article said.

Police reserves were called and broke up the riot, but it marked a serious new layer to the shortage.

In an article that ran the same day, Williamsport was added to the list of those locked in an increasingly dire situation.

“Some dealers entirely out,” a subhead read. “Early closing of clubs, bars and lodges may be required and churches may combine … Williamsport is fast approaching a coal famine. At present, hardly any coal in small sizes can be obtained anywhere.”

In places all over the city, people started buying larger chunks of coal not suited for stoves and started breaking up the blocks with hammers.

A firm of dealers went so far as to put a stone crusher in their coal yard for public use.

Philadelphia reported it had closed 43 schools in the city on Jan. 3, 1918, affecting 25,000 students.

Because Pennsylvania produced 47 percent of the country’s coal output at this time, the state appealed to the government on Jan. 4, 1918, to bail it out and reroute coal going to the southeastern and southwestern parts of the country where it was less needed.

Amid protests all over the state, the federal government agreed to the proposition a day later.

As a result, 28,000 tons of coal was brought into Philadelphia “greatly relieving the situation,” according to the Gazette and Bulletin.

Area hit hard

Lycoming County felt the strain of the shortage most intensely about a week into January of 1918.

On Jan. 8, 1918, the Gazette and Bulletin reported that there was no coal for sale to Muncy residents. Most dealers closed their yards completely.

“Muncy is in a very serious way … There is not a pound of coal to be had in the town and many persons have already used up their last shovelful,” the article said.

In Newberry, Sunday coal deliveries “kept many families from freezing.”

“There are many in this section of the city without coal … The kindness of A.K. Carothers in keeping his coal yard open yesterday (Sunday) saved many families from the intense cold.”

Two days later, Hughesville was saved from losing power completely. Two carloads of wood and two of pea coal were delivered to the borough in reaction to the pipes freezing at the power plant at Muncy Valley.

The plant provided light to Eagles Mere, Sonestown, Muncy Valley, Picture Rocks, Hughesville and other smaller places in the Muncy Creek Valley, the article said.

Another cold front hit the region, freezing railroad tracks. The railroad companies, already suffering from the coal shortage, had to turn to other methods to get the little coal they had to places that needed it.

All over the Northeast, companies, including the Pennsylvania Railroad of the West Branch Valley, began using old railroad ties as fuel.

Workers would put unused ties under pump house boilers to thaw them and then chop them into pieces.

A drastic move

By Jan. 12, 1918, the country was worried that the shortage may affect war plants fueling America’s recent and escalating role on the Western Front of World War I.

Five days later, Garfield ordered that all industrial plants east of the Mississippi close for five days and that “Fireless Mondays” were to be encouraged for weeks afterward.

A group of Williamsport’s biggest manufacturers met that night at City Hall to discuss the shutdown. They agreed to comply, according to the Gazette and Bulletin.

After the shutdown on Jan. 22, 1918, The Associated Press reported the closing helped. “Homes throughout the east are receiving coal in larger quantities,” an article read.

Mostly all places in Williamsport complied, and the Gazette and Bulletin reported that “a true patriotic and optimistic spirit prevailed on the first Fireless Monday in spite of the fact that everything was closed tight.”

Philadelphia began moving coal at a rapid rate by mid-January and, by the end of the month, news of American troops in the trenches of Western Europe took back the headlines.

But another cold wave moved heavy on the city and the whole Northeast, and, on Feb. 2, 1918, Garfield said the situation again was grave and talked about recalling the closing orders.

Heatless Mondays were continued and weather was said to have improved by Feb. 9, 1918.

The last heated Monday was on Feb. 11, 1918.

The only region in the country that hadn’t shown any signs of improvement was New England.

The fuel shortage was reported as relieved on Feb. 14, 1918, and the region was placed on a 10-week probationary period where Heatless Mondays could be reinstated at anytime.

When it was all over, coal production in the East had fallen by 16 million tons in January alone, according to the Gazette and Bulletin.

“The shortage of coal has taught almost everyone a lesson,” according to the Gazette and Bulletin. “Hereafter, no doubt greater economy will be practiced.”

Coal was the largest source of energy beginning in the 1880s when it replaced wood. It remained the largest until the 1950s when it was replaced by petroleum, according to the World Coal Association.