#minimg disaster

[scotianostra]

On September 18th 1959 47 miners were killed at Auchengeich Colliery, Lanarkshire when the bogies carrying them to work ran into smoke 1,000 feet below ground.

Most tragedies on this scale are further back in history, there will still be people out there that were involved in, or remember this. By the time the 80's arrived I only recall accidents at my local pit, where there were single casualties, this disaster would have shocked a whole community.

No day in the last century of Scottish mining was more tear-stained than September 18, 1959. In the space of just a few minutes, 47 miners died, 41 women were widowed and 76 children lost their fathers. Just one miner survived.

The death toll from the underground fire in Auchengeich Colliery, in Lanarkshire, was the worst in the history of mining in this country. The tragedy decimated families.

The day that turned to tragedy began unremarkably. At about 7am on that Friday, the early morning shift had clocked on. They were being carried to the coalface hundreds of feet underground in a small train of bogies.

They had no inkling that 1400ft below the surface a deadly sequence of events was in motion.

A canvas transmission belt on an unattended electrically powered fan had jumped off its pulley and was jammed. Friction ignited the belt which, in turn, sparked off oil vaporised from the shaft bearings and the oil deposits around the fan.

The flames, fed by the draught, ignited nearby timbers. The fire filled the main roadway on which the men were riding with a lethal cloud of carbon monoxide.

Tommy Green was the sole survivor out of the 48 miners who took the bogie ride to disaster. He was a strapping 6ft 4in, known to be a gentle giant devoted to his family. Tommy was 50 when the accident happened, the father of six girls vowed to never enter a pit again after his miraculous brush with death.

A list of the dead an a full account of the disaster and enquiry can be found here http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/250.html