Los Angeles herald., 1890-06-17
THIRTY-TWO VICTIMS
A Terrible Mine Disaster in
Pennsylvania.
Explosion of Fire-Damp in a
Dunbar COlliery.
Fifty-Four Men in the Slope and
Nearly All Perish.
The Mine Burning Fiercely and Rescuers
Unable to Recover the Bodies
Heartrending Scenes.
Associated Press Dispatches. |

lhiiiOiS uWclliilSS Oll GIle Mills ldfll, Ill
Fayette county, near this place. Hun
dreds of affrighted people who knew the
town too well, and who feared another
mine disaster, soon found their appre-
hension well grounded. In moment
the fearful news had spread that the
mine had exploded. The low brows of
the hills from which the slope entered,
shook from mouth to pit, and score of
miners houses, lining the fatal hill.
shook for moment and then poured
out their frenzied inmates by the hun
dreds. A rush was made to the mouth
of the pit, but ingress was impossible, as
smoke in dense volumes was issuing
forth. Fifty-two miners had gone to
work this morning, and were in the slope
when the explosion occurred. Of these
tifty-two, eighteen were in the left
heading and thirty-two in the right
heading. Those in the left heading got
out all right; the retreat of the others
was cut off, and not one escaped. Their
names are: Joseph Brigner, Richard
Brigner, Milt Farney, Barney Maust,
E. Maust, Pat Courtney, E. w. Mitchell
Jos. Bigley, Peter Eagan, Robert McGill
Martin Sesvene, John Cope, Andrew
Cope, Patrick Develin, Joseph Delany,
John Joy, John Devanney, David Davis
Thos. Davis, Patrick Cahill, William
Cahill, Patrick Courtney, Jack Mitchell,
Daniel Smith, Daniel Smearn, William
H. Ayres, James McCleary, Elmer
Denny and Peter McGough. OF these
twenty-one were married and leave
families.
The mine, it seems, had been some
what troubled with water, and an air
shaft had been drilled from the surface
to the junction of the right and left
shafts, where the water seemed to be the
most abundant. AS the miners
an air hole had beer drilled there, and
that at this place it would break into
the mine, but they did not know that
the shaft was broken into today; this
shaft, by the way, being a six-inch hole.
A miner named Kerwin had been left in
the right drift, near where that branch
joined the mines exit, and in the course
of his labor broke the perpendicular
shaft. The moment this was broken
into flood of water gushed out, and
Kerwin and man named Landy stand
ing by yelled out to save the men in the
right shaft, as the water poured down
the hill in stream, and he feared they
would drown.
Young David Hays, who had seen the
affair, leaped forward at the call, and
turned down the left drift to warn his
endangered comrades 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 deadly volume of fierce
fire-damp, and as the young man swung
by the shaft, flash of blazing light
slid through the shaft from end to end,
it seemed. The daring young man car
ried an open burning miners lamp in
his hat, and he had hardly taken step
beyond the roaring shaft when spark
ignited the reservoir OF deadly fire.
damp, and he sank corpse ten feet
toward the men whom he had hoped to
save, and the men whom he had GER
tainly doomed.
In an instant an unquenchable fire
sprang up in the nine-foot vein, just be-
tween the main entrance and the right
drift, forever shutting off the thirtytwo
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 strangled by the fire damp,
fell blindly by the side of his
son, and was dragged out an hour
later, with James Shefn, both recog-
nized only by their wives.
The fire, famed by the air from the
main drift and from the fatal shaft, soon
spread into an awful confagratiOn.
The miners from the left drift reached
the surface blackened and bruised, but
safe, and they tell fearful story of the
sight beyond the blazing coal on the
right. Willing hearts and hands were
not wanting on the outside, and Clerk
Cook, with Mine Inspector Keaghley,
headed party of a hundred who entered
the main shaft, and after cropping on for
a quarter Of a mile, were driven back
again by The deadly gas, only to recover
their breath for moment, and again
plunge in, to find that the right drift
was impenetrable, 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 Shear and
Hays, were drawn into daylight, moan
went up from few OF the hundreds
about the pit. But their anguish was as
nothing to the silent watches kept by
bIlc WlNCS, CilllNlSIl JdI VI oCliC
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
unbroken volumes, and after trials al
most beyond human endurance the
rescuing party gave up all hopes OF ever
rescuing their comrades dead bodies
from that entrance, and turned their
attention to the Ferguson mine, mile
and half away At this hour q a. m. }
they are striving to penetrate from that
mine, but the flames and smoke balk
their every effort.
The universal verdict from old miners
about the shaft tonight is that the en-
tombed men were either killed outright
by the explosion, or later by suffocation.
The latter seems to be more probable, at
least in part, as sounds were heard from
the entombed men as late as | O'Clock