TRAPPED IN A BLAZING MINE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9072, 12 February 1908, Page 2

TRAPPED IN A BLAZING MINE.

,/AgFUL AMERICAN DISASTER. Another terrible American colliery disaster, the fourth in seventeen daja, took place recently, when the Darr mine of the Pittsburg Coal Company, at Jacob’s Creek, on the Pittsburg and Lake Erie Railway, blew up with an explosion that was heard for many miles. Two hundred and fifty men were in the pit at the time, and all were entombed in the blazing mine without hope of rescue. Immediately following the explosion, which occurred at 11.80 a.m., heavy columns of smoke issued from the mouth of the shaft, and up ftf a late hour in the night flames were still raging, rendering impossible any attempt to rescue the ■ emtombed miners. With the exception of one man—an Italian—blown by the force of the explosion oat of the air shaft, no one was seen after the explosion. The Youghiogheny River, on the banks of which the mine is situated, is flooded, and the waters reach nearly to the main entrance, greatly hindering rescue work. The shaft is blocked by debris caused by the terrific explosion, which shook the houses and broke the windowpanes in the town of Oounellsville, eighteen miles distant. Of the men entombed over a hundred are Americans, the rest being Hungarians. Physicans and rescue parties were at once gathered at Jacob’s Creek from all the surrounding towns, but they were doomed to enact the part of impotent, horror-stricken spectators amid the waiting crowds of relatives and friends of the men bilow. It was announced on the Friday night that all hope of rescuing alive any of the men entombed in the pit had been abandoned. Thirteen bodies had been brought to the survThey were horribly mutilated |Hp three of them were headless. It believed that Jibe explosion was w due to gas.