DOBSON DISASTER

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 9, 8 December 1926, Page 4

DOBSON DISASTER

FLOODING THE MINE. TWO MORE EXPLOSIONS. (Per Press Association.) GREYMOUTH, Dec. 7. Pumping operations have been continued at the Dobson mine for the past 24 hours at the rate of 60,000 gallons per hour. The water is rising steadily, though it is not yet apparently as high as the foot of the main lip or haulage road. Evidence of the fire’s activity was further given this afternoon by two explosions within the mine. The first one occurred at 1.15 p.m. and the second at 3.15 p.m. The only external evidence was the loud sounds of the explosion and volumes of smoke. The people who left their homes at North Dobson on Friday evening in fear of further explosions remain still at the residences of friends further down the township. It is anticipated that the work of flooding the mine will have been completed by. to-morrow evening, thus extinguishing the fire, when another task will begin, that of pumping out, the duration of which is uncertain. It is not'expected that production will resume before a couple of months ps much repair work will be entailed by the effects of the repeated explosions, the fire, and the water. A relief fund provisional committee has been set up, including the chairmen of the various local bodies. FINDING WORK FOR IDLE MINERS. GREYMOUTH, Dec. 7. As the result of rams to-day, the Grey river rose to a level this evening that put the pumps out of action at the Dobson mine so that operations had to bo discontinued. The flooding, however, has not been completely stopped as the waters from the mine dam are being diverted to the main dip, and surface water from the stream is also being diverted into the mine. It is possible that this will accomplish the flooding more speedily. The Minister of Mines and Public Works, in reply to a telegram from the union president, Mr Smeaton, intimated that an endeavour was being made to find work for the idle miners at the State colliery, and also in making a road between Blackball and Brunner, and on other public works. At this evening’s meeting of the Greymouth Harbour Board a motion of condolence was carried with the widows and relatives of tho victims of the Dobson disaster. The board also voted 100 guineas to the relief fund. HOMES PARTIALLY WRECKED. LITTLE GIRL’S NAROW ESCAPE. GREYMOUTH, Dec. 7. Although the descriptions of the Dobson mine disaster have chiefly dealt with the fatalities and damage to the mine, the explosions have also caused heavy losses to numerous residents in the mining township, who have had their homes partially wrecked. Roofs have been torn off and windows smashed from the homes of several families in humble circumstances. All those residences in the vicinity of the mine entrances have been abandoned since the disaster. To-day’s rain had caused further havoc to the affected residences. One house near the mine bath-house was visited by a reporter this afternoon, and he found that rain was beating through the roof on to the bedding and furniture, everything in the house being practically ruined. In other homes everything was in confusion from the force of the explosion, the families having only gathered up a few personal belongings before taking their hurried departure. That truth is stranger than fiction is exemplified in the miraculous escape of Jean Patterson, the eight-year-old daughter of Mr W. Patterson, postmaster at Murchison. When the big explosion occurred the child was staying with her grandmother, Mrs L. Thomson, whose house is about half a chain from the Dobson mine bath-house and almost in a direct line with the mouth of the mine. After the fatal explosion Mrs Thomson and the child took up their quarters with her son, Mr J. W. Thomson, engine-driver at the Dobson mine, whose house is situated on a hill close to the main entrance. . The explosions which occurred on Friday night caused considerable damage to Mr Thomson’s house, one big stone crashing through the roof and grazing the bed in which tho child was sleeping. The house vacated by the child and her grandmother was visited to-day by a reporter. He found that the bedroom occupied there by little Jean Patterson had also suffered serious damage. A large stone had crashed through the ceiling, falling on the child’s bed. Alongside her doll at the foot of the bed lay another large stone. The ceiling boards through which the stones were hurled were shattered to atoms. Jean is now described by Dobson women as the little girl with the charmed life.

The women and children residing in the damaged houses were brought to Greymouth on Friday night; further shocks to the nerves of the stricken residents have been caused through reports of slight explosions in the township. Inquiries were made by Constable J. Rodgers, of Brunner, who discovered that the disturbances were caused by an irresponsible person firing off a shotgun. When asked for an explanation the man said, that his cat was hungry and he had shot a blackbird. The constable took possession of the shotgun, and the sensation monger will probably have to make further explanations in the Magistrate’s Court. Despite the contradictory reports in circulation regarding the ventilation of the Dobson mine, it is authoritatively stated that the mine was well ventilated, also that there was an abundance of air in the working places. The alleged reason why some of the mfen spent crib-time in the winch cabin'was to take shelter from the cold rush of air coming through the main drive. In addition to the electric safety lamps in use at the Dobson mine, Bifold’s double-burner oil safety lamps were supplied for gas testing puiqwses. These lamps were given out in response to representations' made by the Miners’ Union, which asked for the oil safety lamps as an extra safety precaution. One of the theories advanced as to the cause of the explosion is that one of these lamps may have been left burning until the flame penetrated through the gauze, resulting in the ignition of accumulated gases. Experienced miners who have witnessed colliery disasters in England and Wales allege that the report from the Dobson explosion was the worst they have ever heard.

BRUNNER’S RISE AND DECLINE. OLD TRAGEDIES RECALLED. Delving for the hidden wealth is always attended by perils which are hardly realised by the toilers under the canopy of the blue skies. The dangers which beset the miner are (says an exchange) ever his companion, be they a fractured prop endangering the roof of the mine, a runaway truck, the insidious “creep,” or, most terrible of all, the accumulation of gas, with its accompanying explosions and fire. It is apparently .the latter conditions which have provided, the Dominkm with its fourth "greatest mining disaster, the tragedy at the Dobson mine last week ranking only after the catastrophes at Kaitangata in 1878, when 34 lives wer lost, at Brunner in 1896, when 63 miners were killed, and at Huntly in 1914, when the toll was 43. THE BRUNNER COALFIELD. The scene of the latest disaster is on a small flat about four and a-half miles from Greymouth, on the main Christchurch railway line, and the mine itself operates on the Brunner coalfields, which was one of the first, if not the first, seams opened for commercial purposes in Now Zealand. Away back in the ’seventies the original Brunner mine, on the north side of the river, was opened, being subsequently followed by the development of the St. Kilda, Wallsend and Tyneside collieries, till in the ’nineties Brunner was in the heydey of its industrial prosperity. Hundreds of miners here found lucrative employment—orders were always plentiful and work to be obtained for the asking —and the borough boasted a happy and contented population of nearly four thousand souls. But evil days were in store. First the closing down of the Wallsoncf mine dealt a staggering blow at the community’s stability, and then came a series of trade depressions, culminating in the most calamitous disaster of all, tho terrible explosion of 1896. From that tragic occurrence Brunner has never recovered.

Early this century the Greymouth Harbour Board, with a view to assisting the languishing industry, undertook drilling operations on the Dobson flat, and the result proved the existence of several seams of good household and gas coal, at varying depths up. to 2000 ft. the diamond drill in its operations went through strata of high interest to the geologist, not the least noteworthy being the occurrence of a stratum suggesting the presence of rubies, whilst at one period mild excitement was occasioned by the unleashing of petroleum seepages, whith caused a fair amount of crude oil to rise to the surface. Oil prospecting areas were immediately “pegged out,” but beyond that stage the matter never progressed. As a result of these investigations by diamond drilling the existence of a considerable area of coalbearing country was demonstrated beyond doubt, and the upshot was the formation of the Grey Valley Collieries, Ltd., in which is invested Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, as well as West Coast, capital. The main haulage road runs in about 1300 ft., with a slight grade, with drives, stopes, etc., from it. It was at the face of one of these workings that apparently the cause of the disaster originated.

TERRORS OF GAS AND FIRE. It is not impossible for those who have been present after a disaster such as happened in 1896 to realise the true nature of. the grim tragedy that has now been enacted at Dobson. An explosion in a mine is mercifully swift and sure in its deadly execution. Like a mighty fiery blast it sweeps the furthest parts, carrying destruction with it, and, as in the case of Dobson, invariably adds to its horrors by firing the coal seams which had already become highly susceptible to ignition by reason of the gaseous conditions obtaining antecedent to the explosion. The fire at Dobson, together with the recurrence of the explosions, undoubtedly sealed the fate of the entombed men. This knoweldge that the men are beyond human relief gives added pathos to the tragedy, but the grim record is illumined, in a manner worthy of the. best traditions of the race, by the courage and sacrifice and devotion of the rescue parties, which pierced a tunnel of black and terrible death only in the end to be driven back by flames and fumes. IN HISTORIC COUNTRY. Dobson, where the disaster occurred, is part of the borough of Brunner — which is claimed in point of area to be the largest.municipality .in New Zealand outside of the four centres, and perhaps the most impecunious—and within a stone’s throw of the mine is the spot where a surveyor named Dobson was murdered in the ’sixties by the Burgess-Sullivan gang, which, on the watch for a bank manager encountered the Government official and killed him on the principle that “dead men tell no tales.’’ A monument erected in the locality brings to the mind of the passerby a tragic page in the early history of the Coast, when the whole locality was being terrorised by a band of murderers who subsequently paid the supreme penalty at Nelson. Then across the river lies the Brunner mine, while, two miles - further on is the Stillwater cemetery, where 24 victims of the disaster were laid to rest in the one grave. Still further on lies the spot where a sensational bank robbery was perpetrated in the ’sixties, highwaymen making a haul of £12,000 in gold from a bank then established at the Twelve Mile (nowknown as Kamaka), the local centre of a once very rich alluvial field. Coming nearer Dobson again, one is reminded of the great landslide which occurred in the Gorge in 1907, when ten people lost their lives and several houses and an hotel were crushed like eggshells beneath the debris. One peculiar incident in connection with this tragic occurrence was that eight children were killed outright, while their father and mother, in an adjoining room in the same house, escaped practically without a scratch. Runanga, which heard the explosion, would be about six miles away as the crow flies, and will be remembered as the scene of the murder in 1918 when William Frederick McMahon shot dead John Coulthard and mortally wounded William C. Hall, and then decamped from the motor car with the State mine pay (£3500). He was apprehended in Christchurch, and subsequently executed in the Lyttelton gaol, protesting his innocence to the end, although the stolen money was found intact in his possession.