Further Particulars of the Colliery Explosion.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 634, 24 February 1879, Page 2

Further Particulars of the Colliery Explosion.

(from our own correspondent. )

DUNEDIN. This Day. Thirty-one bodies have been recovered, and three still inside. The fire damp is bad still. Searchers are carried out insensible. In all there are 35 dead, and all of them being in their prime. Of all these strong men, not one remains alive to tell how the accident occurred. Nearly all were married, and many left large families. An eye-witness says : — ' ' Nearly everyone in the township, was at the mine's mouth, and the air was filled with the lamentations of women and children. It was a sad sight to see dead men brought out one by one, laid on stretchers, and then put into the train which took them to the Bridge Hotel.. All the faces, excepting two, looked calm, as if they lay in sleep, and two young fellows, who had horses, were battered about the bead, having been blown some distance. The flight of sticks and stones at the time of the explosion was tremendous, and a thick green smoke hung like a pall over the tunnel's mouth for about ten minutes. The mine is entered by a main drive or tunnel. The workings rise as they penetrate the hill and fall, which assists the drainage, but causes foul air to accumulate in the upper end of the mine. Ventilation has to travel all round the mine and come back to the air shaft, which is about 150 yards from the mouth of the tunnel. The workings extend about 600 yards from the entrance. The greater part of the men, appear to have escaped the first effects of the fire damp, and were making for the mouth of the mine when they were overpowered by after damp. Some of them must have baen from one to two hundred yards before they fell. At one place 13 bodies were found in a heap. Regarding the cause of the explosion there is nothing but surmise. It is at present supposed by those who know best, that the overseer, named Archibald Hodge, was in the waste workings in the highest mine inspecting, and that his lights caused an explosion. Where his body is found will determine the question. There had been a slight explosion last night in the mine, when the men were on night shifts. The matter was reported in the morning to the foreman, who considered, however, that the mine was in good working order. He has paid for his error with his life. The number of children left fatherless is said to be over a hundred. A public meeting is to be held to-day to take steps to relieve the widows and [orphans, sufferers by the catastrophe,