COLLIERY DISASTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26543, 19 August 1947, Page 5

COLLIERY DISASTER

NINETY BODIES LOCATED PATHETIC SCENES AT PITHEAD LONDON, Aug. 17. Ninety bodies have been located in the Whitehaven colliery. One hundred and seventeen men were in the pit before the explosion, and 13 emerged alive, leaving 14 men unaccounted for. A Coal Board official said: “1 fear there can be no hope of more survivors. In view of what the rescue teams found in the workings there is no hope for anybody.” Officials of the Mine Workers’ Union and the Coal Board, in a joint statement, praised the gallantry, enterprise, hard work, and selflessness of the rescue teams. Reuter’s says it is estimated that over 300 children are'fatherless as the result of the disaster. Special prayers were said in the local churches to-day and a memorial service is to be held next Sunday or the Sunday after. Of the 90 bodies located, 65 have been : brought to the surface. As each .body arrived the police escorted the grief-stricken relatives, usually a wife, to a temporary mortuary to identify the dead. One victim leaves nine children, including two sets of twins Another leaves eight. Two further falls of rock slowed the progress of the rescuers burrowing their way through the debris to the men still entombed in the colliery. Joseph Rutherford, one of the men who escaped from the pit shortly after the explosion, said: “I escaped in the 1941 disaster in the same pit. I heard a rumble and felt blast of hot air. I knew the sound. I knew that the whistling of the wind in the gallery meant an explosion. I shouted: ‘ Come on lads, out we get.’ On the way out we met three men who were badly shocked and took them with us."