The record-union., 1895-09-09
Thirty-fve Lives Probably Lost
in the 0sceola Disaster.
BODIES CANNOT BE RECOVERED UN-
TIL FIRE IS EXTINGUISHED.
Cholera Raging In China. the Daily
Deaths Being Estimated at Two
Thousand at Pekin - The Masonic
Temple at Boston Wrecked by Fire
and Valuable RegaIia Destroyed.

HoUGHToN (Mich.), Sept. SIT is now
positively known that thirty-five men
are entombed in the Osceola mine, which
took fire yesterday aud their bodies can
not be recovered until the fire is entirely
extinguished, which may not be for
months. 1t is the opinion of some OF the
oldest officials OF the mine that the fire
was the work OF incendiaries.
The saddest feature of the disaster is
that ali OF the doomed men might have es-
capped had they needed the warnings of
Captain Edwards, who WAS the first per-
son to detect the existence of the fire
He dispatched messengers to every slope
where the miners were known to be
working, but AS the mine is not heavily
tim bered, except in shafts, the idea OF
serious danger was secuted.
BY going roundabout way the last
men who were in the lower level OF
No. shaft might have escaped, but they
preferred a shorter route of ascent, and
when they got up to the eighteenth level,
found themselves cut of. Some passed
into lateral drifts, expecting TO reach
other shafts. A. j. White descended with
Anton Secyck, who said he had left his
father in the level but Secyck lost his
head and, finding him unmanageable,
White abandoned him to his fate and
reached the surface in safety. He was
the only one of the party in No. shaft to
escape. He reported that trimmers had
offered to carry one of the drill boys to
the surface, but the boy was so frightened
that he refused to move and he was left
to perish.
Additional names of missing men are :
a. Winzia, Andrew Ross. Stephen Byth-
bere, Joseph Slutta. Isaac Harvey; Two
Austrian trlmmers, names unknown, are
missing. Twenty of the thirty-fve are
married men, and most OF them have
large families.
The underground workings being
heavily timbered with pine, the fire
generates great quantities of carbonic acid
gas, which sinks to the lower level SO
that death by sutfOCation is certain 10 all
in the mine below the level OF the flames.
The OsceOla Is, next to the Tamarac,
the chief copper producer In the Clark
Bigelow group. 1t has been in continu-
Gus operation since 1888 and paid average
dividends of 500, 900 annually.
Upward of 200 men were at work in
the other levels of the mine when the fire
started. Many ofthem were taken TO the
May shaft and brought to the surface IN
tho great buckets in fainting condition.
1t is now utterly impossible to quench
rations ere now being made to close the
mouths of the shafts to shut off the air.
The side shaft leading to the thirty-sev-
enth level is hermetically sealed, but the
other shafts will not be closed SO long as
hope remains. 1t is believed it will take
a month to extinguish the fires. This
is thought to be the worst disaster in
point of loss of life in the copper mining
history of Michigan.
The opening at the surface of the burn
ing shaft of the Osceola mine near the
Calumet had been rendered air-tight by
the course of heavy timber covered with
securely packed dirt. The next shaft
north had been similarly covered, and
the smoke from the burning timber in
No. shaft and the drifts adjoining is
now rolling out in dense volumes from
No. shaft, several hundred feet to the
south.
Owing to the sealing of No. shaft, it is
impossible to judge whether the fire is
making headway or abating.
The only precedents from which the
probable direction Of the fire can be
guessed are supplied by the three big
fires which have ravaged the Calumet
and Hecla mines. The greatest OF these
burned for months, and was extinguished
only by flooding the mine with water.
The fire started in the timber in the drift
at the twenty-seventh level, within
twenty feet OF the shaft.