A MINING DISASTER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 8862, 21 July 1890, Page 4

A MINING DISASTER.

A dv»intoh from Dunbar Pa., of June 16, says :— "This -norning, at 11.30 o'clock, a sudden roar shoo!, the lowly miners' dwellings on the hill .*■ > :.\ in Fayette county, near this place. Hundreds vi pfioplo who knew the town too well, and who feared r.r.othor mine disaster, Boon found their apprehensions well grounded. In a moment the fearful news spread that the mine had exploded. A rush was made to the mouth of the pit, but ingress was impossible, as smoke in dense volumes was issuing forth. Fifty-two mjners had gone to werk this

morning, and were in the slope when an explosion ' occurred. Of these 59,18 were in the left heading and 33 in tho right heading. Those in tho left heading got out all right. Tho retreat of. the others was out oft, and not one escaped. Twenty-one were married and have families. The mine, it seems, h»B been somewhat troubled with water, and an air shaft had been drilled from tho surface to the junction of the right and left heading, where the water seemed to be most abundant. As the miners branched off from this point they knew an air hole had been drilled there, but they did not know the shaft was to be broken Into to-day—this shaft, by the w.iy, being a 6in hole. A miner named Merwhi had been left in the right drift near where that branch joined the miners' exit. In the course of his labours he broke iflto a perpeudioular ehaft The moment this was broken Into a flood of water rushed out, and Merwln and a man named Hardy, standing by, yelled out for someone to save tho men in the right shaft, as water poured down the hill in streams and they feired they would drown. Young David Hays, who had Been the affair, leaped forward at the call, and turned down

the drift towards his end and warned his comrades below. Just ao he passed the air Bhaft that had bean broken into the rush of the waters changed into an ugly roar which blanched tha cheeks of the men. Tneflowof water coon ohanged to a deadly volume ol fierce firo damp, and as young Hays hung by the Bhuft a flash of blazing light slid through the shaft from end to end. The daring young man oarrled an open burning miner's lamp In his hat, and he had hardly taken a step beyond the roaring shaft when a Bpirk Ignited the teservoir of deadly fire damp, and he Bank a corpse towards the men whom he bad hoped to save and the men whom he had certainly doomed. In an Instant an unquenchable Ore sprang up in the nine-foot vein, just between the entrance and the right- drift for shutting off. and 32 men were Imprisoned. Poor old David Hays, father of the mistaken hero, driven mad by the fate of his son. dashed Into the sulphurous smoke and wan stifled only to fall blindly by the side of his son, to ba dragged out an hour later by James Sholfln. Both were only recognised by their wlvbb. The fire, fanned by the air from the main drift and from the fatal shaft, Boon spread into an awfnl conflagration. The miners from the left drift reached the Burface blackened and bruised, but safe; and they tell a fearful story of the Bight beyond the blazing coal on tha right. Willing hearts and hands wore'not wanting on the outside, and Olerk Cook, with Mine-Inspector Keaghley, headed a party of 100, who entered the Bhaft, a>id after groping on for n quarter of a mile at last were driven back again by the deadly gas; bnt only to recover breath for a moment, and again plunging in to find that the right drift wa» impenetrable, and no man living could pass. They finally came upon two bodies, and they were brought to the opening of the mine. When the two blackened corpses - those of Sbelfinaud Hays the elder—were drawn into daylight a moan went up from a few of the hundreds about the pit; but their anguish was as nothing to the silent watches kept by the wives, children, and Bweethearfs of the men, whoso doom waa all the more awful because unknown. At midnight smoke and gas from the right shift poured up the main exit In unbroken volumes, and, after trials almost beyond human endurance, the rescuing party gave up all hopes of ever reaching their comrades' dead bodies from that entrance, and turned their attention to the -Ferguson mine. At this hour (2am) they ar« striving to penetrate from that mine, but the flames and smoke baulked their efforts. The universal verdict from old miners ahout the shaft to night is that the entombad men have either been killed outright by the explosion or later by the Buffocation. The latter seems to be the more probable, at least more probable In part, as sounds were heard from the entombed men as late as 1 o'clock this afternoon. Theso grew weaker and weaker, and half an hour later even the most hopeful of the willing rescues could hear nothing. The men say fcb.it had they known the Bhaft had to be broken into they would never have entered the mine, as either water or gas would surely follow. The owners, however, and in feet some of the men themselves say that it waa an accident pure and simple that could not have been avoided. The disaster is the worst ever known in tho Connellville regionThe damage to the mine cannot now be estimated, but the owners fear the slops is lost.