Twenty-Five Years After Brookwood, New Book Chronicles the No. 5 Mine Disaster

Fifty-Five Minutes at No. 5 documents the disaster that killed thirteen Alabama miners on September 23, 2001. Its companion website lets readers question the official record in plain English.

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Brookwood mine disaster, Tejesh Srivastav has published Fifty-Five Minutes at No. 5, a documentary account of the deaths of thirteen miners at the Jim Walter Resources No. 5 Mine in Alabama, and launched a website for the book at 55at5.com.

The site includes a book excerpt, the author's account of his research methods, and Ask the Record, an interactive feature that lets visitors ask questions about the official investigation and enforcement decisions in ordinary language and receive automated responses with references to the source records.

The disaster occurred on September 23, 2001, twelve days after the September 11 attacks. Two explosions, fifty-five minutes apart, left thirteen men dead. About fifteen hundred people attended a memorial service for the thirteen miners. Families, fellow miners, and the Brookwood community have gathered every September since to speak their names.

Srivastav came to the story by happenstance. While working on a project involving Mine Safety and Health Administration records, he read the investigation report on the Jim Walter Resources No. 5 Mine and was surprised at how little he could find about the disaster outside Alabama. Thirteen men had died in the deadliest coal-mining accident in the United States in seventeen years, twelve days after September 11, and he felt the country had moved on. Twenty-five years later he still could find no book about it and no film. He wrote the book and created the website to bring the story to a wider readership.

Accuracy guided his approach. The book draws on official records and published accounts, following documented events without inventing dialogue or the miners' private thoughts.

"My responsibility was to tell their story accurately. That meant checking the facts against the records and being clear about what the evidence could not establish. These men deserve an account that is faithful to what happened," Srivastav says.

The website explains the author's research process and his use of AI tools to extract and organize information and to draft under his direction and editing.

Ask the Record draws on the Mine Safety and Health Administration's December 2002 investigation report and three enforcement decisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission and its administrative law judge. Readers can ask what investigators found, which allegations were considered in enforcement proceedings, and what the decisions concluded. The tool is designed to provide responses with references to the source documents and relevant pages. The collection does not include civil lawsuits or settlements.

Ask the Record is in beta. Its responses are a research aid, not official findings or legal advice, and visitors are asked to verify answers against the original documents before quoting or publishing them.

The book is available in a Kindle edition, linked from 55at5.com and fiftyfiveatfive.com.

About the author

Tejesh Srivastav is a chartered accountant, entrepreneur, and adviser with experience in finance and technology across the United States, India, and Singapore. He holds an MBA in Finance from Cornell University. He lives in Singapore.

Media contact
Tejesh Srivastav
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +65 9869 2784
Website: 55at5.com

SOURCE 55at5.com