Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1905 — FIFTY MINERS IN A LIVING SEPULCHER [ARTICLE]

FIFTY MINERS IN A LIVING SEPULCHER

Forty of Them Believed To (Be Dead as a Result of an Explosion. TREACHEROUS GAS THE CAUSE Leiter Mines {it Zeigler the Scene of the Awful Disaster. Benton, 111., April 4.—Some fifty miners were entombed In Joseph Leiter’s mine at Zeigler by a terrific explosion of gas, and It Is probable that forty or more of the buried men are dead. Thirty-seven bodies have been found. The explosion was due to the fact that the Leiter mines are not worked on Sunday, thus allowing gas to accumulate in the lower workings. When between thirty-five and fortyfive miners had descended into the mine to resume work a horrible explosion blew the mouth of the mine high into the air. Effect of tha Explosion. One of the steel cages was blown 4o the surface from the bottom of a 500foot abaft. The shock of the explosion was felt at Benton, twelve miles northeast of Zeigler. A teamster driving along a road half a mile from the mine was covered with failing cinders, end debris covered the floor of his wagon half an Inch deep. One miner was killed and four were severely Injured at the mouth of the shaft in which the explosion occurred. The work of rescue was begun at once by the who were arriving when the explosion took place. But the main shaft was demolished so that rescue Work has to be carried on though the air shaft Herd to Identify the Deed. The bodies of the dead are so blackened that they cannot at once be identified. Roily Campbell is the injured miner brougfc out of the shaft, and it is said that be cannot live. Campbell is conscious, but be is unable to give any explanation of the accident. C. E. Childers, a striking Zeigler miner, last October predicted in a printed article that an explosion waa likely to occur on account of what he termed improper ventilation of the shafts. There was much excitement among miners when the accident became known, because there had been a strike of long duration and many conflicts bad occurred between strikers and non-union miners. Investigation tends to sbow that the catastrophe was due to the accidental explosion of accumulated gas. Death Dae to Asphyxiation. All the bodies found except two show no marks of injury. Indicating death by asphyxiation. AIT but four of these found worked in the abaft by numbers, and their names have not as yet been secured. An order for twenty cofflns has been sent to St. Louis, besides twenty ordered earlier. BT SOMEONE UNKNOWN Parhap* One of the Dead, the Zeigler Mine Horror Wm Caaaed Not a One Explosion, - Zeigler, 111., April 6. After-damp, due to an explosion of blasting powder set off by persons as yet unknown, caused the death of forty-three miners at Joseph Letter's coal mine on Monday, April 3, according to the verdict of a coroner’s t *<ury as rendered yesterday. Coroner J. M. Adams, of Franklin county, impanelled a jury to investigate the deaths of the miners killed by a double explosion at Leiter’s Zeigler mine the next day after the explosion. After two days’ inquiry a verdict was rendered, which says the deaths were caused as stated above, and that “we further believe that said mine was in good and safe condition for working purposes as far as gas was concerned on April 3, 1905.”