Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1905 — ENTOMBED IN A MINE. [ARTICLE]

ENTOMBED IN A MINE.

Scores of Workers Buried by Accident in Alabama Coal Shaft. One humlred and fifty-two miners, who descended into the depths of the Alabama Steel and Wire Company's Virginia City coal mines, six miles south of Bessemer, Monday morning, were sealed in a tomb hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface as a result of an explosion that occurred at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. , > Between them and the distracted women and children who gathered about the spot that once was the entrance to the mine were thousands upon thousands of tons of slate, coal and earth, and masses of shattered timber, closing the shaft with h plug as solid as the walls of the mine, and sealing the death chamber as completely as could the alchemy of a Hermes. There was no means by which air might penetrate to the entombed men. once the supply that was in the mine when the explosion closed the shafts should lose its life-giving qualities, and there was the probability that the explosion itself filled the inner passages with noxious gases. Gangs of men worked witli desperate energy to dig into the choked mouth of the mine. There is some mystery about the cause of the explosion. By some it is said to have been the result of what is known in mining vernacular as a "dry shot.” The men at work in the minew ere on the sixth lift, far underground. The noise of the explosion aroused the entire mining camp. At once' a large gang of men was organized and equipped witli tools and tire work of opeinng the entrance to the mine began. An average of over l.OO*) persons are killed every year in the collieries of the world through explosions, tires and falling debris that entombs them beyond the aid of rescue. The number killed in coal mines each year during the last decade is ns follows: 18951.030 19001.012 189(11.025 19011.131 1897 930 1902.1.018 1898 908 1!M)31,183 1899 91(1 19041,147 Of more recent disasters the greatest calamity befell the workers in the Albion colliery, near Pontypridd. South Wales, June 23, 1894. By an explosion, to which was added the horror of tire and intombment. the greater part of the miniers were killed. There were 28(» bodiep taken from the mine when the tire had burned itself out. In this country the most horrible mine disaster was that in Fraterville. Tenn., where about 200 workmen were killed May 19, 1902. The exact number of ’ dyad was never known, as many of the bodies were so deeply buried that they were not recovered. More than 200 were missing after the Calamity. Another mine disaster on July 10 of the name year killed 105 workers in the Holling Mill mine of Pennsylvania. A third great disaster occurred June 20. 1903, and snuffed out the lives of 175 r men and boys at Hanna. Wyo.