FAIRMOUNT MINING DISASTER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 9000, 10 December 1907, Page 5

FAIRMOUNT MINING DISASTER.

KESCUE WORK. SAD SCENES. Received December 9, 8.25 a.m. NEW YORK, December 8. Additional particulars in . connection with the terrible mining accident which occurred on Saturday last near Fairmount, in the northern part of the S*;ate of West Virginia, show that eighty-five bodies have been recovered. The explosion carried a block of concrete weighing a thousand pounds across the river, where it was imbedded in the hillside. Officials believe that a blockage at an entrance a few hundred feet beyond the main opening interrupted the ventilating system, killing the entombed men in a few minutes. The town of Monongah, the scene of the explosion, has 6,000 inhabitants.

Throughout the night hundreds of men stood at the mouth of the pit. Women crowded the hillsides, finally crying themselves to sleep on the frozen ground. Five men were rescued. All were injured, and unable to give details cf the disaster. Parties of ten men each are working in short relays owing to the accumulation of gases. ONE HUNDRED BODIES RECOVERED. SCORES MORE VISIBLE, BUT UNAPPROACHABLE. A PILE OF COFFINS. Received December 9, 10.1 p.m. NEW YORK, December 9. One hundred bodies have been recovered. Scores more bodies are visible among the wreckage, but the gases prevent their recovery. Hundreds of coffins are piled at the pit's mouth. It is whispered that there were 1,000 men in the mines at the time of the explosion.