GREAT CATASTROPHE.

Hastings Standard, Volume XI, Issue 5680, 9 December 1907, Page 3

GREAT CATASTROPHE.

CABLE NEWS.

EXPLOSION IN A COAL MINE. OVER 400 MINERS PERISH. London, December 7. A mining disaster tx curred yesterday ai Monongah. near Fairmount, U.S.A. The scene of the catastrophe was Ihe Biltimore Consolidated Coai C-impanv'-i mini", where, through an explosion, two pits mutually connected and situated on opposite sides of the Monongahela river were set on fire. Some hundreds of men were at work in the mine. A number of them were hurled through t'.i- - ventilating shafts. The actual loss of life is not yet known, bnt it is feared that 425 have perished. "♦The fumes were so dense tha 1 search parties who entered the mine were unable to penetrate to the workings. Some of the bodies discovered by the explorers were so mutilated as to be quite unricognisable. Ail the passages of the mine are blocked by fails of debris, and it will be a miracle if any of the entombed men are saved. The force of the explosion was so great that it shook all houses within a radius of 8 miles. AN AWFUL NIGHT. rbCENI,S AT THE PIT .MOUTH. WOMEN CRY THEMSELVES TO SLEEP. £*nir*«i Press* - 4 s>ooiat:on By hlectric 1 -Copjrigrt. {Received 8. 8.25 a.m). New York, Dec. 8. Eight)-five bodies have b;en recovered. The explosion carried a block r>f concrete weighing one thousand pounds across the river, iing it the hiii=.kle. P Officials believe the blockage of thi .entrance a few hundred teet beyond •the main ripening interrupted the ventilating system, thus killing the men .who were entombed in a few minutes. Monongah has 6.000 inhabitants, rand throughout the night hundreds oi .men stood at the mouth o; the pit. Women irowded the hillside* finally crying themselves to sleep on the frozen ground. Five men have been rescued, but •they are all injured, and are unable to ve details of the disaster Parlies of ten men each are working • ,'m rt relays, owing to the accumulation of gase's.