Tim Quinn joined generations of Southwestern Pennsylvanians 17 years ago seeking a good-paying job with benefits at a local steel mill.
A few years after the South Huntingdon man graduated from Yough Senior High School, Quinn followed his father Tom into U.S. Steel Corp.’s Clairton Works, the nation’s largest coke-producing plant that sprawls for miles along the Monongahela River.
Quinn, 39, was one of two people killed Monday during a series of explosions at the plant, where 10 others were injured.
“He loved the job. It was his brotherhood and sisterhood,” said his sister, Trisha Quinn, 39, of Madison.
He worked at a tough job — next to the airtight coke ovens where pulverized coal is baked at 2,000 degrees for 18 hours, then pushed out and quenched before being used in the steelmaking process. On his Facebook page, Quinn stated he was a “heater” at the mill, working at the same coke ovens where his father once did.
Trisha Quinn said Monday started just like another weekday for her brother. He rose before sunrise and left home in the dark to begin his swing shift at 5:30 a.m. The first explosion occurred at about 10:45 a.m.
If he had concerns about working next to a coke-producing ovens, where fires and explosions have occurred in the past, “he never brought it specifically to my attention,” Trisha Quinn said.
She began searching for information on her younger sibling soon after she heard about the blast.
“I drove around to hospitals in Pittsburgh, looking for my brother,” she said.
She learned the grim news from a member of her brother’s team and other steelworkers from the plant.
About 5 hours passed before she received official confirmation that he had died. Representatives from U.S. Steel came to the house to pay their condolences early Monday night, staying for about 15 minutes, she said.
Family man
Quinn lived in the home in which he grew up along Skyline Drive in the isolated village of Fitz Henry in South Huntingdon, up a hillside from the Youghiogheny River.
The house where Quinn lived with his mother, Debbie, and his three children is in the shadow of the westbound lanes of the expansive Youghiogheny River Bridge that carries Interstate 70 across the river and the CSX railroad line that runs along the Yough from McKeesport to Confluence.
He was a devoted single father of one son and two daughters, Trisha Quinn said.
“He just spent time with his kids,” his sister said.
He loved to fish and ride the Harley-Davidson motorcycle he recently purchased, Quinn said.
He saw a future for his 17-year-old son, Jeremiah, a rising senior at Yough, at the Clairton Coke Works, she said. But after what happened on Monday, she is hoping that Jeremiah studies to become a nurse.
Quinn had recently taken his youngest daughter, Teagan, 5, to kindergarten orientation, Trisha Quinn noted. His other daughter, Lilliana, is 11.
He also was devoted to taking care of his widowed mother, who is dependent on supplemental oxygen to breathe and is visually impaired.
“He was a mamma’s boy,” said Crystal Titel of Latrobe, who was visiting the family Monday evening.
She described Quinn as having a larger-than-life personality.
“The world is definitely going to feel this one,” she said of Quinn’s passing.
Trisha Quinn said her mother had not yet come to terms with what happened Monday.
“She’s waiting for him to come home,” Trisha Quinn said.