TO RESCUE MATE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20483, 8 December 1934, Page 11

TO RESCUE MATE.

Miner Braves Explosions and Fumes. VICTORIAN ACCIDENT. Four hundred feet underground, at the Nelson Consolidated Gold Mine, near St. Arnaud, Victoria, on November 20, a miner tried lierioeally to rescue his mate in the face of terriffic explosions from gelignite. The first charge blew two men 10 feet from the rock face at which they were working at the end of a long crosscut. Thomas Cornelius, 33, could then hear his mate, Artlmr Jackson, 52, moaning a few feet away from him. Cornelius, numbed, deaf and badly injured, groped his way in the pitch darkness along the narrow rock-strewn passage to Jackson. He knew that at any moment the second charge was due to explode. Struggling forward on his hands and knees, lie reached Jackson. He seized him by the shoulders and pulled. Jackson was pinned to the ground by a jagged boulder of rock. - Cornelius was trying frantically to ■push his way when, with a deafening roar, the second charge of gelignite exploded. More shattered rock swept down the crosscut. Both men were thrown back a further five feet. Bleeding from Seep gashes below his chest, Cornelius was too weak to make further efforts. Almost Blown to Ground. The place where the men were working was 200 feet from the main downward shaft. Cornelius staggered along the crosscut toward the shaft. On the way he was almost blown to the ground by the explosion of three more charges. He reached the crosscut; he yelled to two other men, Messrs. Triffet and Shade, who were seventy feet in a cross-cut running in the opposite direction : “Help! My mate is shot, he’s in there now.” Then lie collapsed. Triffet and Shade raced out of the cross-cut to the shaft well, where Cornelius had collapsed. As they struck fifteen alarm strokes with a hammer on the metal alarm knocker three more explosions, making eight in all, made-the mine tremble. Then they went along the eastern cross-cut in an effort to rescue JackThe pxplosions occurred just before 4 p.m., when a change shift was waiting at the shaft head to relieve the men below. Immediately the alarm was heard, J., Burns and W. Pritchard went down in the cage to help Triffet and Shade. The four men were driven back by the acrid fumes from the gelignite. Held upright in the narrow cage, Cornelius was taken to the surface and sent by ambulance to hospital. It was not until ten minutes after the explosions that Burns was able to reach Jackson. Pritchard almost collapsed from the effect of the fumes. Air was pumped into the cross-cut, and with his head and mouth covered with a wet cloth Burns removed a big piece of rock from Jackson and pulled him out of the cross-cut to the shaft. He was dead. His body had to be strapped to a ladder to enable the miners to take it in the narrow cage to the surface. Cause of Tragedy. The manager of the mine, Mr. J. T. Coucliman, said that the tragedy was caused by the men trying to light too many fuses at the one time. “They were working in a wet place,” said Mr. Coucliman, “and were trying to ! bght ten fuses. Actually they lit eight, j but the wetness of the spot caused the | lighting to take longer than usual, and j the first charge exploded before they got through the ten.”

Burns said next' day that the whole affair was a terrible ‘nightmare. “We were almost suffocated and blinded by the fumes,” he said, “but when a mate is down there, there is something that impels you to go on —and at great risk we did go on.”

After the accident all the men at the mine were suffering great nervous strain.