Tank's Poetry
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united states mine rescue association
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Tank's Poetry |
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Early today 63 of the more than 200 miners trapped in the pit when the explosion occurred Saturday were accounted for. Fourteen men have been rescued alive and 49 disfigured bodies have been brought to the surface and placed in temporary morgues. Walter H. Glasgow, state secretary of mines, who arrived Saturday night has settled on a total of 210 as the number of men originally trapped. Glasgow held to the hope that some of the main group of miners in butt 4, where it was thought the gas exploded, might yet be found alive in their working places, more than 300 feet underground and thousands of feet from the shaft entrance. "If the men have air they are still alive," John Ira Thomas, Deputy Mine Secretary in charge of the Bituminous Section said. But rescue workers were more dubious about the chances of life withing the subterranean chambers than were the state mine officials. Rescuers noting the manner in which the recovered bodies have been disfigured, saw little possibility that life should have survived in the pit nearer the explosion. Officials of the mine refused to give up hope of finding any of those entombed alive, but the grime covered rescue workers have just one word for inquirers -- "gas." One theory of the explosion was that a pocket of gas had been struck by one of the working faces in the mine. Veterans of the pit, including O'Hara, who has worked in the Mather mine four years agreed with this theory and gave the opinion that is was a coal dust explosion. They believed a wreck had piled up a motor and a string of mine cars stiffing up a lot of coal dust, which had been ignited by a trolley wire. They cling to this theory even though the Mather mine, which was considered a model in modern methods of engineering efficiency, had been completely rock dusted, which is a method used in mines to avert explosions of coal dust. Note: The news article lists the company name as Mather Collieries Company, while the final investigation report states it to be Pickands-Mather and Company. |
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