Benchman Marshal Hutchins was seriously burned while filling SCBA cylinders with oxygen. The oxygen in a filter and the piping supplying the pump ignited combustible material within these components.
Barrick team members, Theodore Milligan and Dale Spring were overcome and died of heat exhaustion during a training exercise at the company's idled Storm underground decline.
The disaster struck when a runaway train plunged down Vaal Reef's number 2 shaft. The train crashed on top of an elevator carrying miners to the deep gold seams - sending those trapped inside hurtling to their death 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) below the surface.
Seven company and contractor officials were walking to the top of a raw coal pile when a section of the coal pile that was 4 to 6 feet in diameter suddenly collapsed. Five of the individuals were rapidly swallowed by the hole and suffocated. The two others escaped injury.
The Buffalo Mining Company retaining dam collapsed resulting in the confirmed deaths of 114 persons along Buffalo Creek from Saunders to Man, West Virginia, a distance of about 17 miles.
Thirty-one limestone workers were killed when 20 tons of TNT prematurely exploded at the Lehigh Portland Cement Company's Sandts Eddy Quarry due to the use of old (5-6 yrs) blasting caps.
Seven miners were killed in one of the most extraordinary anthracite disasters on record. All were "transportation men" who perished when a 250 pound boulder fell about 625 feet into the No. 3 Shaft of the South Wilkes-Barre Colliery and smashed into their ascending elevator.
Mining Literature
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Mine Disasters
