Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1890 — TERRIBLE MINE DISASTER. [ARTICLE]

TERRIBLE MINE DISASTER.

An explosion occurred, Thursday, in a colliery at Aberyschan.in Monmouthshire, England, ten miles northwest of Newport.! Three hundred miners were imprisoned, and for several hours no communication could be had with them. An opening was finally effected and nearly 150 of them were rescued. A number of those taken, out are severely injured. The owners of the colliery estimate that half of the miners in the pit lost their lives by the explosion. The cause of the explosion was the floods ing of pits adjacent to that in which the explosion occurred. By the flooding of these pits gas was dislodged and forced' into the pit where work was in progress,, and there it was ignited and exploded. There must have been a great quantity of' gas, as the explosion had tremendous force., It was heard at a distance of a mile. All 1 the gearing in the shaft was thrown into, the air as if from the mouth of a volcano,, and simultaneously a vast, bright volume of flame snot forward, followed by a dense, heavy column of smoke. The work of removing the bodies of the miners is being carried on as rapidly aspossible. Already one hundred and fifty bodies have boon taken from the pit and i is believed that thirty more remain there, The ventilation of the pit has been restored! and this greatly faciliatos the.efforts ofi the workers. A very pathetic incident in the work of rescue was the finding of the bodies of a, father and his five sons in a group. They had not been burned at all and they appeared to be calmly sleeping. All of them; died from suffocation. Several of tho men who had volunteered far the work es" rescue were made aick by handling the burned bodies and were obliged to come to the surface. The list of those who lost their lives by, the explosion in the colliery, at Abersychnn, is constantly increasing. One hundred bodies have thus far been taken from the pit, and it is believed that the total number of persons killed will reach 190.