page_title: Springhill mining disaster
section_title: 1956 explosion
hierarchical_section_title: Springhill mining disaster / 1956 explosion
caption_attribution_description: Inside a Springhill, Nova Scotia mine. This is the mine shaft that is open to the public, with guides.
context_page_description: Springhill mining disaster may refer to any of three Canadian mining disasters that occurred in 1891, 1956, and 1958 in different mines within the Springhill coalfield, near the town of Springhill in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia.
  The mines in the Springhill coalfield were established in the 19th century, and by the early 1880s were being worked by the Cumberland Coal & Railway Company Ltd. and the Springhill & Parrsboro Coal & Railway Company Ltd. These entities merged in 1884 to form the Cumberland Railway & Coal Company Ltd., which its investors sold in 1910 to the industrial conglomerate Dominion Coal Company Ltd. Following the third disaster in 1958, the operator Dominion Steel & Coal Corporation Ltd., then a subsidiary of the A.V. Roe Canada Company Ltd., shut its mining operations in Springhill, and they were never reopened. As of 2015 the mine properties, among the deepest works in the world and filled with water, are owned by the government of Nova Scotia, and provide Springhill's industrial park with geothermal heating.
context_section_description: The 1956 explosion occurred on November 1, 1956, when a mine train hauling a load of fine coal dust up to the surface of the 25-year-old Number 4 colliery to remove it from the pithead encountered a heavy flow of ventilation air being forced down the shaft by surface fans. The flow of air disturbed the dust on the ascending train cars and spread throughout the air of the shafts of No. 4. Before the train reached the surface, several cars broke loose and ran back down the slope of No. 4, derailing along the way and hitting a power line, causing it to arc and ignite the coal dust at the 5,500-foot (1,700 m) level (below surface).
  The resulting explosion blew the slope up to the surface where the additional oxygen created a huge blast, which leveled the bankhead on the surface – where the coal is hauled out from the mine in an angled shaft into a vertical building (the coal is then dropped into railway cars). Most of the devastation was sustained by the surface buildings, but many miners were trapped in the shaft along with the derailed train cars and fallen support timbers and other items damaged by the explosion.
  Heroically, Drägermen (rescue miners with breathing equipment) and barefaced miners (without such protection) entered the 6,100-foot-deep (1,900 m) No. 4 to aid their colleagues. 39 miners died, and 88 were rescued.  International media coverage of the 1956 explosion was largely overshadowed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez Crisis, which happened at about the same time. Nevertheless, Canadian and local media gave extensive coverage to the 1956 disaster.
  After the rescue effort, the connected No. 4 and No. 2 collieries were sealed for several months to deprive the fires of oxygen. In January 1957, the bodies of the remaining casualties were recovered from the pit, and No. 4 colliery closed forever.
  One of the rescuers, physician Arnold Burden, was also involved in the 1958 disaster.
caption: Inside a Springhill, NS mine shaft
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