PicoZ

Out of the comparative quiet of noon-hour one day last week in the mining village of Millfield, Ohio, a great rumbling and roar burst skyward. Suddenly the place swarmed with running human beings who converged on a wooden shed covering the shaft of Sunday Creek Coal Co.’s mine No. 6. Men, women & children hurried, hurried, their faces set, their eyes wide with foreknowledge that what every miner fears had happened. As they raced to the shaft-head, the earth shook beneath their feet again—another murderous, man-trapping, mind-shattering explosion. The racers were friends & relatives of 238 men in the mine. First to arrive manned the shaft elevators, went down into darkness. Tense minutes passed before they brought up more than 100 frightened, lucky men who had been near enough the shaft to race away from gaseous Death. Soon the fatal “black damp,”* cause and aftermath of most coalmine explosions, rushed up into the wooden shed, drove rescuers back gasping. They were frantic, unorganized. The company’s president, William Ewing Tytus, its vice president, P. A. Coen and the mine’s superintendent, Walter Hayden, were all down there, a mile and a half along the rocky channels from the shaft-entrance, where they had gone to show a party of guests a new ventilating fan. Assistant Superintendent Peter McKinley took charge, issued 20 gasmasks to volunteers, sent them down. They came back. The gas had penetrated their masks. Out along the dirt road leading from the nearby town of Athens came the whistles and bells of ambulances, police cars, special State mine-relief cars which had been stationed throughout the coal area. Underground the mine channels were strewn with debris. A shattered 12-ton hauling locomotive had been blown 50 ft. from where it stood. Farther along the track, a 3,000-lb. steel car had flown 35 ft. The bodies of 79 dead men lay scattered about, maimed by the explosion or torture-twisted by the gas. Nevertheless, 20 live men were found huddled in a pocket in the rock. They had built a brattice or partition of wood and canvas between them and the gas, under the leadership of Mine Foreman John Dean who, after carrying most of his companions behind the brattice, was so badly gassed he was expected to die. President Titus and his party of guests were not among the saved. He, a Yale-educated Wartime airman, aged 41, father of three, was a popular Ohio clubman and civic leader, first associated with the company (one of the biggest in Ohio) through his marriage to the daughter of its late president, John S. Jones.

Cause of the explosion was undetermined last week. The mine interior previously had been thought to be so damp it could not contain gas, and open torches were permitted the miners. Authorities last week guessed the explosion occurred when a coal slide caused sparks, which ignited gas gathered in a pocket. Such explosions in coalmines occur instantaneously. Therefore, and because coalmines are not equipped with compressed-air systems as are metal mines, “stench” warnings as recommended last week by the U S. Bureau of Mines (see p. 62) are not practicable for coalmines.

*Or firedamp. It is 77.5% to 98.2% methane (“marsh gas”), mixed with almost negligibe quantities of other poisonous, highly inflammable gases. Its presence is usually detected by a pale, violet-blue “cap” above the miners’ safety-lamps.

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