Colliery Disasters
On 10 March 1905, an explosion occurred at the Cambrian Colliery No.1. The explosion was heard for miles around the valleys and resulted in the loss of 33 lives and serious injury to 14 others. The accident happened between the day and night shifts, otherwise the death toll would have been far higher.
On 25 November 1941, seven men were killed and 53 were injured when a trolley transporting miners down a sharply sloping shaft ran out of control. The incident happened at the 'Gorky' drift mine, with ninety men and boys taking the spake, an open-sided trolley fitted with cross planks for seating and a central overhead handrail as a holding point, down to the workings 525 yards below. The surface engineman suffered a temporary blackout and the manual brake was disengaged, causing the spake to quickly build up speed. Most of the injuries and fatalities were to miners who leapt from the spake and were thrown back under the trolley due to the narrowness of the drift shaft.
On 17 May 1965, a third major accident occurred at the Cambrian Colliery. An explosion caused by firedamp, after poor ventilation allowed a build-up of flammable gas, killed 31 miners. The ignition point was later identified as an electric arc on an open switch-panel which was being worked on. This was the last major mining disaster in South Wales history.
Read more about this topic: Clydach Vale, History
Famous quotes containing the word disasters:
“The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)