FOUR DAYS BURIED.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2132, 15 July 1907, Page 4

FOUR DAYS BURIED.

THRILLING RESCUES FROM A COAL MINE. Experiences of a most terrible character have fallen to the lot or seven American minors, caught by a rush of water in tho workings of tho Foustwoil Colliery, Pennsylvania. An unfortunate blasting accident Hooded tbe tunnols for more than half a mile on Saturday, April 28th. The men in question were cut on from tho shaft in a small gallery chamber, and practically buried alivo. . . ~ Tlioir onlv wav of lotting thoso above know that they \vere still alive was bv tapping a 400 ft conijirossed air pipe which reached to tlio summit of the shaft. Ton pumps wore immediately sot to work pumping out. the water at the rate of 2000 gallons a minute. Physicians, nurses, and relatives, together with a great crowd, waited auxiouslv at the pit’s mouth for news, the continued tapping showing that the men were still alive. At last on Tuesday two hold rescuers volunteered to make a search, and descended the flooded pit amid the cheers of the thronging people. The difficulties they met with were immense. But they made their way undaunted through all obstacles actually at the hist swimming some voids under water to the air chamber, where the miners were confined. Here they discovered the men trying to sing a Methodist hymn to sustain their spirits. Their lamps had given them light, and their combined dinner-baskets food, which had lasted to the end. Tliov said they extinguished six out of tlioir seven lamps, and thus their oil was not exhausted. They all feared the darkness more than hunger, thirst, or tho rusling waters. After the prisoners had been reached, tlioir two rescuers put ropes round tlioir waists, and they wore hauled backward through the section of tho tunnel separating the spot where the men wore found from the passage of comparative safety 20 vnrds nearer the shaft of tho mine. They were dragged along so swiftly by their anxious mates that their heads and bodies were bruised against the rough angles of tlio cave.