Collapse / Roof Fall disasters

Underground falls of ground, roof or side collapse, shaft collapse.

See all disasters, including type and year filtering.

5 disasters.

• Cwmorthin Back Vein collapse
  1884 · Collapse / Roof Fall · Gwynedd
  A catastrophic collapse in the Back Vein roughly halved production and made about half the workings inaccessible, eventually forcing the operating company into liquidation.
• Dolcoath Mine stope collapse
  20 September 1893 · Collapse / Roof Fall · Cornwall · 8 fatalities
  A timbered stope collapsed at the 412-fathom level, one of the deepest workings in Cornwall, killing eight miners and trapping a ninth for over a day and a half before he was rescued unhurt.
• Great Laxey Mine scaffold collapse
  10 December 1904 · Collapse / Roof Fall · Isle of Man · 4 fatalities
  A working scaffold gave way underground, and the four men on it fell into a water-filled sump about 17 feet deep. All four drowned, including the youngest, 18-year-old Henry Lewis Gelling.
• East Pool Mine shaft collapse
  1921 · Collapse / Roof Fall · Cornwall · 0 fatalities
  A large underground rockfall destroyed both of East Pool's winding shafts and flooded the mine; no deaths were reported, but the mine had to sink an entirely new shaft to survive.
• Wheal Jane acid mine water discharge, 1992
  13 January 1992 · Flooding / Inundation · Cornwall
  An estimated 50,000 m³ of acidic mine water burst from the flooding, abandoned Wheal Jane workings and turned the Carnon River and Fal estuary ochre-yellow — one of the most notorious mine-water pollution incidents in British history, and one still being actively treated more than three decades later.