The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-06-17
DEATH CLAIMS THEM ALL
Thirty-Two Miners Lost in the Awful
Mine Calamity Near Dun
bar, Pa.
A Youthful Hero Surely Dooms
the Men He Would Have
Saved.
The Water Poured In Through An Air
6haft-Fire Damp Ignites and
Explodes-Awful Scenes.

DUNBAR, Pa, June 16.-This morning at
11:4O q sullen roar shook the lowly miners
dwellings, at Hill Farm, in Fayette county,
near this place, and hundreds Of afrighted
persons who knew the sound too we'll, and
who feared another mine disaster. soon
found their apprehensions well grounded.
In moment the fearful news had spread
that the Hill Farm mines had exploded.
The low browed hill from which the slope
entered. shook from mouth to pit, and
score Of miners houses lining the fatal hill
their frenzied inmates by the hun
dreds. rush was made to the
mouth Of the pit, but ingress
was issuing forth. Fifty-two miners had
slope when the explosion occurred. OF
these ffty-two, eighteen were in the left
heading and thirty four in the right head
ing. Those in the left heading got out all
right. The retreat of the others was cut
off and not one escaped. Their names are
Courtney, +. ". Mitchell, Joseph Bigiey,
Peter Caean, Robert McGill, Martin Cavene,
John Cope, Andrew Cope, Patrick
Devlin, Joseph Delaney. John Joy.
fSSn bav. 1fs,s5ss f.t1of oaS Ryd ws wnE TheHHs 6eS
Patrick Courtney, Jack Mitchell, Dan.
McCleary, Elmer Denny. OF those twenty
one were married and have families. The
mine, it seems, has been somewhat
troubled with water and an air shaft had
been drilled from the surface to the juno
ture of the right and left shafts, where the
water seemed to be most abundant. As the
miners branched off from this point, they
knew an air hole had been drilled there
that had not yet been broken into the
to be broken into to-day. This shaft, by
the way, was a six.inch hole. A miner
right drift. near where that branch
Joined the miner exit and in the course of
his labors broke into the perpendicular
shaft. The moment this was broken into
flood of water gushed out and man
named Landy standing by yelled out for
some one to save the men in the right
shaft as the water poured down the hill in q
stream and he feared they would drown.
leaped forward ae the call and turned down
the left drift to warn his endangered COM
rades below. just as he passed the air
shaft that had been broken INTO, the rush
Of waters changed to an ugly roar which
blanched the cheeks of the men.
The flow of water had changed to a
deadly volume of fire damp, and as young
Hayes swung by the shaft flash of blazing
Light slid through the shaft from end to
end. 1t seemed daring thing, but the
er's lamp in his hand, and he had hardly
taken step beyond the roaring shaft when
the spark ignited the reservoir of deadly
fire damp. and he sank a corpse ten feet
from the men he had hoped to save and the
men whom ne had certainly doomed.
vein, just between the main entranee g
and on the eight-drift, forever shutting off
the thlrty-two men imprisoned there. Poor
old David Hays, father of the mistaken
hero, driven mad by the fate of his son,
dashed into the sulphurous smoke and
strangling fire damp, only to fall blindly by
the side of his son, and to be drawn out an
hour later with James Shearn, both recog-
nized only by their wives. The fire,
famed by air from the main drift
The miners from the left drift escaped
plackened and bruised, but safe, and they
tell fearful story of the sight beyond the
blazing coal on the right Willing hands
outside, and Clark Cook with Mine Inspec-
tor keagley, headed a party of 100 who en-
tered the main shaft. and after CROPPING on
for quarter of mile at least, were driven
back again by the deadly gas. only to re-
cover breath for moment and again
FAuASO AAS w AAO U4dU Uu0 I1UuG uTl1G WAS
lmpenetrable and no man living could
pass. They finally came upon two bodies,
and they were brought to the opening of
the mine. When the two blackened
corpses, those of Shearn and Hays, the ell
der, were drawn into daylight. moan went
up from few of the hundreds about
the pit, but the anguish was as nothing to
the silent watch kept by wives and children
and sweathearts of the men whose doom
was all the more awful because unknown.
At midnight smoke and gas from the right
shaft poured up the main exit in an un
broken volume, and after trials almost
beyond human endurance, the resculng
their comrades dead bodies from that en-
trance and turned their attention to the
Ferguson mine. mile and a half away.
At this hour, 2. a. M, they are striving to
penetrate from that mine, but the flames
and smoke balk their every effort. The
shaft to. night is that the entombed men
were either killed outright by the explosion
or later by suffocation. The latter seems
to be the more probable, at least in part,
as sounds were heard from the entombed
men as late as o'clock this
afternoon. These grew weaker and
weaker however. and half an hour later
even the most hopeful of willing rescuers
could hear nothing. The men cay had they
known the shaft was to be broken into
they would never have entered the mine, as
either water or gas would surely follow,
since in these regions gas always comes
from upper shale. The owners, however.
say it was an accident pure and simple
that could not have been avoided. The
disaster is the worst ever known in the
Connellsville region. The damage to the
mine cannot now be estimated, but the
owners fear the slope is lost.