The Plymouth tribune. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1901-1911, 1909-11-18
MEN DOOMED IN FLAMING PIT
Hay Being Taken Down by En-
gineer Becomes Ignited from Cap
Lamp and Blasts Follow.
HEROIC DOCTOR SAVES MANY
Fire Is Smothered and First Res
No Bodies, Alive or Dead.

The most appalling mine disaster
in the history of the United States oc-
Cured Saturday afternoon in tho little
town of Cherry. Bureau County, Ill.
A fire that started in the main shaft
of the st. Paul Coal Company's works
choked out the lives of 400 men work
ing there. Thirteen rescuers who went
down into a blazing shaft were roasted
alive to a man. A few score of surviv-
ors, blackened by smoke and singed
by fame. crawled from reeking crew
ices in the earth to tell an incoherent
story of almost inconceivable horrors
in the corridors below. The rest
there were $50 human beings in the
mine when the fire broke out-per-
ished in the flame-swept works.
Saturday night the exits of the mine,
from which smoke and flame had
belched since 1870 in the afternoon.
were battened down. This heroic REM
edy was decided on as last means of
extinguishing the fire in the works
beneath. Above seething furnace. in
which three-fourths of the male popula-
ton of the community is imprisoned,
the town waited in silent dread for the
dawning of the morning. When day
came the matches were to be opened
and the toll of death begun. The cry
of the widow and the orphan rang
dolefully on the ear.
The fire broke out at about 1870.
Engineer John Cowley, who is in
charge of the elevator running from
the surface to the higher of the three
veins in the mine, had descended with
load of six bales of hay. On the
way down the hay was ignited by his
torch. Reaching the level below him
he dragged the bales out of the car
and attempted. to hurl them into the
stump of the second shaft, at the bot
tom of which is pool of water. Be-
fore he could do so both the first and
second shafts were afire. strong
draft coming up to the surface turned
the two shafts into red-hot fiues AL
most before the danger could be real
lied the mine was ablaze everywhere,
md the main avenues of escape cut off.
The Cherry disaster, like every great
disaster in America, developed its men
of the hour, its heroes. There is in
Cherry one man who is deserving of
a11 crln haf hn fnh ,al
bravery and self-sacrifice merit. He
is DR.. L. B. Howe, the ST. Paul Min
ing Company's physician. To him
twenty-five of the rescued miners owe
their lives Escaping by d miracle
from a red-hot lift in which twelve of
his companions were roasted like quail
ON a griddle, he returned six times
alone into the seething inferno of the
shaft, and each time came to the sur
face with a group of men he had saved.
He desisted from his efforts only after
it had become apparent to every one
that to descend in to the shaft again
would be certain death.
Exploration of the mine was begun
Sunday. Volunteers, equipped with
oxygen helmets, essayed to explore the
shaft. Two of them in a bucket were
lowered three times down the air
shaft They found no bodies, living
or dead. At depth of $40 feet the
temperature of the mine was found
to be practically normal-94 degrees
indicating that the fire had burned
itself out.