The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-11-25
NO MORE ALIVE IN CHERRY MINE Scores of Miners Bodies
 Found. FIRE BREAKS FORTH AGAIN First Rush For Safety Evidently
 Proved Fatal. Water, Waist Deep in Gallery, DeIays Recovery of Bodies--victims Left Many Messages sn Slate and
 Boards Telling of Pending

Cherry, H., Nov. 24.--After more than 150 bodies had been discovered in the St. Paul mine early today, efforts to take them to the surface were tempo rarily abandoned while a battle was begun to check a fire which again threatened the main shaft.
 If the efforts to control the fire are is probable the mine will again be sealed and remain so for weeks. if not months.
 Today fiames from the fire in the sec- ond vein. BIO feet below the surface. had swept fifty feet up the main shaft. Then the fire was forced back. Mine Manager Taylor declared that the de- struction of the mine shaft Is at all times imminent and with 1t the only possibility of removing the bodies
 That no men survive in the mine is generally conceded even by the most optimistic of the Cherry miners. The only part of the mine as yet unex- piored. and in which living men possi- bly, could be found. is the east work ing Of the second vein, at the entrance of which the fire Is burning fierceiy.
 Twice. rescuing parties that have ventured past the fire area have been temporariiy cut of by the flames and rescued with difiioulty. No further at- tempt to venture into it will be made until the fire Is extinguished, which may be work of many days.
 That no living man is confined be- hind the flames, or any other portion of the mine, was the conviction of all the experts on the scene today.
 Practaiiy all of the bodies Of those who perished in the Cherry disaster were found this morning on stairease at the mouth of the third. or lower. level. One hun- dred and sixfy-eight bodies were found. leaving little more than score to be accounted for.
 The miners evidently had died in the first rush for safety in the explosion and fire on November 13. The bodies Tere Id | great tangled mass, com Bfetety Blocking the Hfaircase lsadiHE from the thfrd to the second vein and were scattered along the vein where they had dropped before reaching the stairway.
 Black damp was the cause of death. all means of escape having been block ed by debris falling and covering the top of the staircase The men had died as they tried to push through the ob- structions or In 'waiting vainly for rescuers.
 Two rude wooden ventiiating fans. fashioned after. the same manner as those found two days ago with the dead in the second gallery were affixed to the shaft wall and stairway. The men had turned these by hand in. their frantic struggle for air and in the hopeless effort to brush back the slow ly covering black damp.
 The bodies were found 500 feet from the main shaft, on an elevated surface where they had retreated before the advancing water and fatal black damp. They had not been able to escape the latter and had died after a struggle that may have continued for two days.
 Messages scrawled on wood and the natural slate cropping from the walls. placed the number of dead at l60 or 16S. One message read:
 aWe are all here to die together.
 This Is accepted by mine officials as indicating that many men whose es- cape from the second vein had been cut off by fire had descended to the lowest level and that less than dozen bodies will be found in other sections of the mine.