MAYPOLE COLLIERY DISASTER

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9173, 24 August 1908, Page 5

MAYPOLE COLLIERY DISASTER

CABLE NEWS.

United Press - \',v Klectric Telegraph

KING EDWARD'S SYMPATHY. LONDON, August 21. King Edward has sunt a telegram of sympathy to the sufferers by the Maypole colliery disaster. A RELIEF FUND. Received August 23, 4.15 p.m. LONDON, August 22. A Maypole Relief Fund has been opened at Wigan. The Maypole disaster should afford the recently established British school of instruction in rescue work in mines an opportunity of showing what ic car. do. It has been a charge against british mining that it has been slow to take up scientific rescue work, such as the use of apparatus which permits rescuers to work in foul air or poisonous gases. Recently a school was established, with a model mine attached, at which instruction is given in this difficult and dangerous work.

A demonstration given in London iast year showed how science has come to the aid of rescue; work in mines. The apparatus in question is designed to supply the user with perfectly respirable air entirely independent of any communication with the outer atmosphere for about two hours at a time. It has no air-pipe or other connection with the base of operations, so that for exploring or rescue work in mines its scope of utility is very wide. The wearer is said to be rendered perfectly safe from the most deadly gases, and is enabled to walk any distance and' to explore the intricacib of a mine with perfect freedom of action. The general principle of the apparatus is that the wearer breathes the same air over and over again, the carbonic acid being absorbed from it after each expiration. At the same time, the requisite amount of oxygen is restored to the air supply automatically, thus rendering it pure and fit for inhalation. At the demonstration a man entered a chamber filled with dense fumes and poisonous gases. He then crawle I on hands and knees over various obstacles and through a pipe measuring only 20in in diameter; finally rescuing a dummy figure weighing ten stone.