Rescue Work in Colliery Disasters. LIFE-SAVING APPARATUS WANTED FOR BRITISH MINES.

Progress, Volume I, Issue II, 1 September 1906, Page 298

Rescue Work in Colliery Disasters. LIFE-SAVING APPARATUS WANTED FOR BRITISH MINES.

The catastrophe in the French colliery of Courrieres, in which twelve hundred lives were lost, has drawn attention to the equipment of search parties who bravely descend to explore the mines on such ghastly occasions. Germany sent to the scene of this disaster a life-saving corps of Westphalian colliers, equipped with oxygen-breathing apparatus. The present German Emperor, notoriously alert to advanced ideas in every field of endeavour, as long ago as the year 1890 expressed to his Minister of Public Works his desire " to see the State mines develop into pattern institutions in respect of care for the workers." In this particular matter of the rescue of imprisoned miners Germany is ahead, not only of France, but also of England, for all German collieries are provided with the oxygen-breathing apparatus, m the proportion of one set to every twenty miners.

To quote from a writer in the London Daily News, in England it often happens that rescuers have to stand at the mouth ot the pit helpless, because " Englishmen are still content to depend on their native pluck and physical endurance, and Parliament has not yet seen fit to order, as the German Government has, that miners shall have the advantage of all the protections which science puts at their service." It is to be hoped that the admirable action of Germany in sending the life-saving detachment to the aid of the French miners may help to fix attention upon the need for similar apparatus becoming a necessary part of the equipment of every pit m Great Pritam. Our illustration cf the apparatus is given by courtesy of Messrs. Siebe, Gorman and Co., the well-known submarine engineers. It is interesting to note that they are the original manufacturers of the self-contained breathing apparatus using compressed oxygen with caustic soda, the latter for absorbing the carbonic acid, and all apparatus of this description — German or otherwise — is on their principle. The entire weight of the apparatus is under 20 lb. The great point about it for rescue work in a mine is that the wearer is quite independent of any connection with the outer atmosphere, and can go where he will. He breathes into a bag fastened in front of him, in which a supply of caustic soda absorbs all the carbon dioxide from his breath, and the nitrogen left he can reoxygenate from the cylinder of compressed oxygen behind him just as he feels the need.