MINE CATASTROPHE

Hokitika Guardian, 19 December 1929, Page 5

MINE CATASTROPHE

SIXTY-THREE .KILLED. 200 CHILDREN BEREFT. [ United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). NEW YORK, December 17. At the Oldtown Coal Coy., mine at McAlister. Oklahama, 65 men were entombed by an explosion. There have been sixty-three dead bodies found in a gas-filled chamber, five thousand feet below the surface. There was a frightful explosion it: the mine. Only two miners escaped alive. The remaining 63 were suffocated by gas.

Groups of screaming and sobbing women and children gathered at the entrance of the mine.

The majority of the miners killed were married men. They have left nearly two hundred children. A Red Cross Society appropriation of twenty thousand dollars has been requested for the immediate care ol the bereaved ones. The mine authorities believe that all have been accounted for.

The relief workers, after spending a day in endeavouring to save the miners, turned their efforts to aid the hysterical, grief-stricken families of the mining village, who were interrupted by the blast in the midst ot their preparations to celebrate Christmas,

57 BODIES RECOVERED. (Received this day n't 9.40 n.m.) NEW YORK, Dec. ]B. A report from McAlister, Oklahoma, state’s fifty-seven bodies were recovered of the sixty-two entombed in yesterday’s mine explosion.