COLLIERY WORKS DAMAGED

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 November 1931, Page 7

COLLIERY WORKS DAMAGED

HUGE SLIP IN WALES. J —— [TIMES CABLES.] LONDON, November 5, The barking of a dog, which was eventually killed by debris, saved a family and possibly, also seven hundred miners, from death in Rhondda Valley. A huge tip of thousands of tons of debris from the Abergorchy Colliery, after twenty hours of a gale and rain, began slipping from its- foundations at. midnight. The dog alarmed the occupants of a colliery ■ clerk’s house, which stood directly in the path of the avalanche of debris. Those in the house had just enough time to get out in their night-clothes by the back door, as the house wa§ engulfed. An enormous mass of rubble and stones, colossus like, swept down upon the colliery works, swamping the feeder that was supplying the colliery engines with water. The avalanche crashed into the engine-house. The colliery clerk hurriedly summoned officials and workers, who hastily hauled away one hundred empty tram-cars, which, however, were speedily overwhelmed by the avalanche. Later, there was a slide for a further quarter of a mile, which threatened the mine shaft, thus endangering seven hundred men, who were below, and also affecting the mine ventilator. The machinery was so damaged that only one boiler remained working, and it raised just sufficient steam to work the lifts and bring up the men and some of the horses from the mine to the surface before a cessation of tho slide removed the anxiety. . The damage amounts to thousands of pounds. Work at the colliery will be impossible for a fortnight.