River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-06-19
IN A a,,RNlno MINE.
Thirty-Four Men Imprisoned In a Penn
syivania CoIiiery In which an Expio-
sion of Fire-D Damp Had occurred-Aii
Avenues of Escape Closed, and They
Have Undoubtedly Perished.

sylvania CoIiiery in which an Expio-
sion of Fire. Damp Had occurred-Ait
Avenues of Escape Closed, and They
Have Undoubtedly Perished.
DUNBAR, Pa, June 17-Yesterday
morning at l1:10 sullen, shivering
roar shook the miners dwellings on
Hill Farm, in Fayette County, near this
place, and hundreds of affrighted per-
sons who knew the sound too well knew
another mine disaster had occurred. In
a moment the fearful news had spread
that the Farm Hill mine had exploded.
A rush was made to the mouth of the
pit, but ingress was impossible, as smoke
in dense volumes was issuing therefrom.
Fifty-two miners had gone to work and
were in the slope when the explosion
occurred. OF these fifty-two eighteen
were in the left heading and thirty-four
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.
At a. m. the gang turned in at the
mines, the smaller gang drifting off to
the left, while the larger drifted to the
right, and descended 500 feet from the
surface and at least a mile from
the opening. These two drifts are
connected. but the connection is
from the main stem, half mile from
the entrance The mine, it seems,
had been somewhat troubled with
water, and an air-shaft had been drilled
from the surface to the juncture of the
right and left shafts, where the water
seemed to be most abundant. As the
miners branched off from this point
they knew that an air-hole had been
drilled there that had not yet been
broken into the mine. but they did not
know that the shaft was to be broken
into during the day. 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 labors broke into
the perpendicular shaft. The mo-
ment this was broken into a
flood of water gushed out and
Kerwin and a man named Landy stand
ing by yelled out for some one to save
the men in the right drift, as the water
poured down the hill in a 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 drill in a deluge of
water 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 who
stood behind.
The flow of water had changed TO a
deadly volume of fire-damp, and as
young Hays swung by the shaft fash
of blazing light slid through the shaft
from end to end. The daring young
man carried an open burning
miners lamp in his hat and he had
hardly taken step beyond
the roaring shaft when the lamp
ignited reservoir of the deadly fluid,
fire-damp, that had already accumulate
slant an unquenchable fire sprang up
in the nine-foot vein just between the
main entrance and the right drift, for
ever shutting in the thirty-twO men
imprisoned there.
David Hays, the father of the mis-
taken 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 recognizable only by their
wives. The FIRE, famed by air from the
main drift and from the fatal shaft itself,
soon flied the entire mine.
The miners from the left drift es-
capped blackened and bruised, but safe,
and they tell fearful story of the sight
of score of terrible faces walled in by a
flame no man could pass and live.
Willing hands and hearts we're not
wanting on the outside and a party
of 100 entered the main shaft, and,
after cropping on for a quarter of a mile
least, were driven back again and
again by the deadly gas, only to recover
breath for moment and again plunge
in to find at last that the right drift
was inpenetrable and no man
living could pass in. Sounds we're
heard from the intombed men as late as
/ o'clock in the afternoon. These grew
weaker and weaker. however, and half
an hour later even the most hopeful OF
the rescuers could hear nothing. The
men say that had they known the shaft
was to be broken into they would
never have entered the mines as either
water or gas would surely follow. The
owners, however, and some of the men
say it was an accident pure and simple.