A RUDE AWAKENING The Effect of a Colliery Cave-In On a Pennsylvania Town

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 203, 14 May 1887, Page 3

A RUDE AWAKENING The Effect of a Colliery Cave-In On a Pennsylvania Town

Thk New York "World's" Wilkesbarre special says : The<inhabitants of a portion of the littla town of Plains, four miles from this city, received o rude awakening shortly before midnight last night. The workings of the Mill, Creek colliery, of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, extend under a large part of the town, known as the Cravy" tract, and at some points come with in less than ninety feeb of the surface. About 11.30 o'clock, while, the inhabitants we c iv bed, the silencO of the, night was h\ oken by a rumbling crash. Houses shook and trembled, and with a shock like that of an earthquake, six acros of ground • settled from three to six feet, and the eavth was travel sed in all directions by_ gaping lissure, some of them two feet in width and apparently without bottom. There are about twenty houses on the disturbed tract of land, and before the ground had ceased to shake and settle every house was vacant, and the trembling inmates clad for the most 'part in nothing but their night-clothes, were running wildly about on the snow-covered ground, calling for lights and help. In one place a hole appeared in tlie ground twenty feet acioss and as many deep. Nearly every building on the disturbed tract was greatly damaged. One of the most serious, results of the cavein was the drying up of all wells for a long distance around, the water finding ih way into the mines through cracks in the rock-.