Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1900-05-08
KILLS 25O In A MINE.
EXPLOSION TRAPS WORKERS IN
UTAH SHAFT.
Not One Escapes to Give Facts of Dis
aster-The Rescuers Recover Charred
Bodies of Many Victims Blasting
Powder Believed &c lie TO Blame.

Two hundred and fifty lives were lost
IN an explosion III mines No. ] and No.
4 of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company
at Winterquarters camp, two miles north
Of Scoiield. Utah. Every man in the two
shafts was killed, not one escaping to
give details of the disaster.
AT midnight 1871 bodies had been re-
covered and rescue parties, made UP OF
friends and relatives of the victims, We're
working in the leads in the vain hope
that some might have lived through the
accident. Help was sent from Cotton,
sixteen miles away, on the Rio Grande
Western Railway, and sll possible was
done to bring out the dead from the
wrecked mines
The accidental saising of blasting pow
der, of which number of kegs We're
stored in mine No. A. is believed TO have
been the cause OF the disaster. This
mine was the first TO suffer and the ex-
plosion IN shaft No / followed almost
Immediately. The sapposition is that
the flames were communicated to the
second mine by a gallery which connects
the two workings.
All the dead taken out of No. were
burned and cliarred, showing that the
fire must have swept like a wave through
the entire shaft. In the other mins the
bodies were not so seriously disfgured,
death having come from suffocation.
Many who were in the vicinity of the
mouths of the shafts were injured by the
blast which issued from the openings.
The buildings at the mouths were dam
aged seriously, and the whole country
around trembled from the force of the
explosion.
The disaster occurred while the $50
men of the day shift were busy in the
various galleries and not one who was
inside had warning of the peril Those
outside saw flame and 5mobe burst from
the openings, followed by dull rumble,
the tearing of timbers and crashing of
falling masses of earth and rcck and
then all was silent.
Immediately, from every direction.
came men, women and children to whom
the ominous sound could have only one
meaning. 1t was some time before aught
could be done and the wives, mothers
and children of those entombed in the
awful death trap crowded to the en-
trance wailing and crying for their loved
ones.
News Of the explosion spread with
lightning speed through Sco6eld, which is
chiefly made up of families of employees
of the coal company Dispatches were
sent to Cotton, from which place a train
with doctors and hospital supplies was
hurried to the scene. AS soon as possi-
BILE the rescue work was begun, but the
task was not rescue. only the bringing out
of the dead that was before the terror
stricken workers. Despite peril from
broken timbers and loosened masses OF
rock, the miners and trainmen entered
the blackened shafts and dragged to the
light the mutilated corpses of their
friends and neighhors.
Officials of the company are unable to
explain the cause of the explosion The
mines were comparatively free Of coal
gas and it is said that an ordinary flame
could not have caused the disaster. The
story that an explosion OF powder was
responsible for the igniting of the gas
and the awful havoc that followed seems
borne out by the statements of all famil-
lar with the interior of the workings.