LIFE UNDERGROUND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 852, 21 December 1929, Page 34

LIFE UNDERGROUND

ACCIDENTS IN MINES FACTS THAT STIRRED M.P’S “Last year there were 1,009 fatal accidents, and 161.790 non-fatal accidents in British coal mines. Let us try to visualise what this means. It means a procession 35 miles long, four abreast and 15 yards apart; at every 11 yards you have an ambulance, and at every 60 yards you have a hearse. The fatal accidents average on this basis over two a day, and the nonfatal accidents 413 every day, 18 every hour, and one every three minutes.” These details were among the facts that stirred M.P.’s, reports a London paper, during a discussion in the House of Commons on conditions in the coalmining industry of Great Britain. Members of all parties were deeply touched at many of the statements, which were sparsely reported in the newspapers. The above statement by Mr. Hopkin, M.P.. and the following vivid speeches are taken from the official report of the debate. “.A Terrific Total” Sir Herbert Samuel said; “Imagine 100 miners who spend the whole of their working lives in the pit, going in as boys and coming out at a time when their working lives, for natural causes, are likely to be over, say, when they have served 40 years in the pit, as, of course, many miners do in the course of their lives. According to the statistics at the present time, of those 100 miners, if they suffer, according to the average, the fortunes of the mining industry, four will have been killed: IS of the 100 will have suffered a very serious injury, that is to say, injury such as a fractured skull or a broken limb; 16 of the 100 will have suffered from miners’ nystagmus, a very painful, distressing and often disabling disease of the eyes; 16 will have had beat hand, beat knee, or beat elbow —miners’ synovitis, a disease which may disable a man for a very long period, and perhaps altogether stop his working career. “So that more than one-half of the 100 in the period of their working life will, according to average, either have suffered death in the pit or serious injury, or nystagmus, or those other special miners’ diseases. “On the average, every one of tlie 100 will have suffered seven accidents, involving more than a week of disablement; so that among that group of 100 men there will have been 700, in a period of 40 years, of minor accidents so-called, but each severe

enough to lay a man away , work for at least a week. "That shows that there l s rifle totai of accidents in tin. 7* dustry.” 6is Scope for Prevention “In ISSO, roughly 50 years ag„ ... lives were lost through explosion. . tire damp or coal dust.” said Mr T ° f Smith. “In 1925. the figure had''.n.® to 36. In ISSO, through f a u s e ? ground. 493 lives were lost i» of year, through falls of grcunc lives were lost. In addition ”30 Mt were lost last year through hauls?! accidents. *** “Science, in its very useful res»ar„>. work, the experimental work that h :aken place and the growing ledge so far as chemistry | s . cerned, has done much to "make it?' mines more safe from the point , view of explosions, and the directin of our efforts must largely be to*..? reducing the falls of ground "Last year, of the 496 lives were lost through falls of ground * find that the number of lives lost 8 (he coal face were 326 and the numb!! of lives lost on the roads, 170.”