Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1883 — Fires in Coal Mines. [ARTICLE]

Fires in Coal Mines.

Drowning out amine, says a Pottsville, Pa., correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, means something more to the operator than simply filling a mine with water'and pumping it out again. It results in months of. enforced idleness to himself and his men, and thousands of dollars expense in reopening gangways and other underground passages. At Wadesville shaft, previously mentioned, Mill Creek was turned in on the 28th of April of last year, and, though for several months past pumping has been going on industriously, and about 2,000,u00 gallons of water a day have been hoisted, it will be ten weeks yet before the mine is emptied, and two months beyond that before the gangways can be reopened and the miners begin cutting coak Not far from this mine are the old Hickory workings, which ha\e been afiie tor the past twenty-five years. Twenty years ago it was necessary to dig a deep and wide ditch into the hillside to cut off the fire and pievent it from reaching the works of Beechwood Colliery, the breaker of which stands nearly two miles away. This fire had its origin at the boilers of an inside engine. The hot ashes were thrown into worked out places, which ignited and spread with such rapidity that the place had to be abandoned. Colket Colliery, nr the western part of this (Schuylkill) county, presents some curious phasps of mine fires. The dirt, or culm, bank approaches very near to Donaldson. In tact the village is built under the shadow of the great mountains of culm. The latter have been afire for some time, and forces of men are battling with the flames daily. Below the surface, however? the flames are raging with even greater severity. For ten years the east side workings of the bio vein at this colliery have, been afire. The shaft is over 800 feet long and acts as a chimney or flue to draw off the carbonic oxide and nitrogen gases thrown off by the burning ooal. These gases vitiate the atmosphere with deadly effect. “I have stood on the edge of a breach in the neighborhood,” said Mine Inspector Samuel Gay this week, “and have seen birds fall dead out of the trees overhead. The sides of the breach were covered with skeletons and fresh corpses of birds that had perched in the trees for a few minutes, and small animals that happened in the vicinity.” One volume of carbonic acid gas, it will be remembered, diffused through one hundred volumes of air, totally unfits it to sustain life. It is this gas whieh is thrown off by heaters and stoves, and that produces such fatal results in close, ill-ventilated rooms. The death of the late Sheriff Scanlon, of this county, is attributed to the constant breathing of gas .rom the rock bank fire of Colorado Colliery.