Disasters

Explosions, floods, collapses and other major incidents at UK mines — including significant post-closure incidents in abandoned workings. Each record is researched to the same standard as a mine or terminology entry, not just a casualty count.

20 disasters in the 1940s, of 505.

Disaster	Date	Type	Region	Fatalities
Collins Green Colliery roof fall, 1940 Seven men were relocating a turbine in the main level of the Collins Green Pit at Bold when a section of roof collapsed on them on 14 February 1940, injuring two and completely burying five; three were dug out alive over the following hours but two, including the overman's own father, died after more than thirty hours under the fall. Two rescuers were awarded the Edward Medal.	14 February 1940	Collapse / Roof Fall	Merseyside	2
Mossfield Colliery explosion, 1940 Eleven men died in an explosion in the Cockshead seam at Mossfield Colliery, Longton, at about a quarter past one on the morning of 21 March 1940 — the same seam that had killed sixty-four in 1889. Twelve were at or near the 15's Level face; only the fireman, Arthur Seaton, survived. The chief inspector of mines traced it to firedamp built up behind the very packs that had been built to seal off a heating six days earlier.	21 March 1940	Explosion	Staffordshire	11
Upton Colliery Explosion, 1940 Shortly before midnight on 4 June 1940 an explosion tore along a longwall face in the No. 2 district of the Barnsley seam at Upton Colliery, about a mile and a half from the pit bottom. Six men were killed and eight burned. It was believed that a stopping sealing off an area where a fire had burned some months earlier had blown out.	4 June 1940	Explosion	West Yorkshire	6
William Pit Explosion, 1941 A genuinely unusual disaster: water gas, produced when water was poured onto glowing coal in a sealed-off fire area at William Pit, accumulated in a confined space and exploded, killing twelve.	3 June 1941	Explosion	Cumbria	12
Rhigos Colliery Explosion Between eight and nine on the evening of 10 July 1941, gas exploded about a mile inside No. 4 Drift at Rhigos Colliery, above the Vale of Neath. Sixteen men and boys were killed, all believed to have died instantly in the blast, out of 36 underground. The dead came from the Aberdare and Glynneath area and included a father and son, and five of them were aged 18 or under. At the September inquest the coroner concluded that the gas had been ignited by a miner smoking: cigarettes and matches were found on and beside the bodies.	10 July 1941	Explosion	Neath Port Talbot	16
Bullcroft Colliery Explosion, 1941 Six men were killed outright by an ignition of gas at Bullcroft Colliery just after three in the morning on 19 October 1941. They were about 430 feet from the shaft bottom, and all but one were members of the mine rescue team, at work on problems within the mine.	19 October 1941	Explosion	South Yorkshire	6
Blaenclydach Colliery spake runaway, 1941 At about seven on the morning of 25 November 1941 the spake, the man-riding train of seated drams carrying about ninety men and boys into the 500-yard Abergorchy drift at Blaenclydach Colliery, ran out of control and careered two hundred yards before it was stopped. Men who jumped were thrown back under it in the narrow drift. Seven were killed, two of them fifteen-year-olds, and many more injured.	25 November 1941	Haulage / Transport	Rhondda Cynon Taf	7
Sneyd Colliery Explosion An explosion of coal dust in the Banbury seam of No. 4 pit at Sneyd Colliery, Burslem, at about ten minutes to eight on the morning of New Year's Day 1942, killed 57 men and boys. Miners traditionally did not cut coal on New Year's Day, but the manager had asked them to work for the war effort and they had agreed. The explosion was confined to one district; four of the sixty-one men in it came out alive.	1 January 1942	Explosion	Staffordshire	57
Bickershaw Colliery explosion, 1942 An explosion in No.4 pit's Rise Unit, probably caused by spontaneous combustion igniting gas in sealed-off old workings, killed 6 men shortly before midnight on 5 January 1942.	5-6 January 1942	Explosion	Greater Manchester	6
Murton Colliery explosion, 1942 A firedamp explosion at 8pm on 26 June 1942, in the Back-over Flat district of Murton Colliery's Five Quarter seam, killed 13 of the 15 men working there when a deputy fired six shot holes simultaneously without first checking for gas.	26 June 1942	Explosion	County Durham	13
Kennox Colliery Flood (1943) A sudden inrush of water flooded Kennox No. 7 mine, Douglas, trapping three men of one family; a thirteen-day national rescue effort ultimately failed to reach them alive.	30 May 1943	Flooding / Inundation	South Lanarkshire	3
Blidworth Colliery Cage Collision (1943) Three men cleaning water garlands from a scaffold mounted on a descending cage were killed when the shaft's two cages collided for an unexplained reason.	Sunday night, 6 June 1943	Winding / Shaft Accident	Nottinghamshire	3
Carway Colliery outburst, 1944 An outburst of methane gas and fine coal in the 'Gowers' district of the Big Vein at Carway Colliery, Gwendraeth Valley, killed two colliers on the nightshift of 26 May 1944 -- the only outburst deaths in the mine's history.	26 May 1944	Other	Carmarthenshire	2
RAF Fauld explosion, 1944 An accident during routine ordnance handling at the RAF's underground ammunition depot, built into a disused Staffordshire gypsum mine, detonated thousands of tonnes of stored explosives — the largest explosion in British history, killing at least 70 people and leaving a crater over 1,000 feet across.	27 November 1944	Explosion	Staffordshire	70
Manvers Main Colliery explosion, 1945 A firedamp explosion in the Meltonfield seam at Manvers Main Colliery on 4 March 1945 killed five men after a damaged power cable, left connected and re-energised, ignited gas that had escaped past a ventilation failure.	4 March 1945	Explosion	South Yorkshire	5
Burngrange Oil Shale Mine explosion and fire, 1947 An open acetylene cap lamp ignited firedamp underground at Burngrange Oil Shale Mine on the evening of 10 January 1947, triggering an explosion and fire that killed 15 of the 53 men underground that shift — the greatest single loss of life in the history of Scotland's shale oil industry.	10 January 1947	Explosion	Midlothian	15
Felinfran Colliery Explosion, 1947 An explosion of gas 1,800 yards underground, while fourteen men were carrying out maintenance over the Easter holiday, killed two of them and injured six. Smoke hampered their escape, and a mines rescue team went down in breathing apparatus to help bring out the injured along a damaged haulage road.	6 April 1947	Explosion	Swansea	2
William Pit Explosion A shot fired in the No. 2 Dip face of the undersea workings at Whitehaven ignited firedamp and coal dust, two and a half miles out from the shaft. Fourteen men were killed by the blast. Ninety more survived it and then died of the carbon monoxide it left behind, before rescuers working through more than twenty hours could reach them.	15 August 1947	Explosion	Cumbria	104
Louisa Colliery explosion, 1947 Louisa Colliery at South Moor, near Stanley, was eight months into public ownership when it exploded on 22 August 1947, killing twenty-two men. The district where it happened, the 4th North in the Hutton seam, had been sterilised for years by a fire in the seam above and had only been made workable again in 1944 when new seals were built nearer the old fire; the inspector's report notes that no inflammable gas had ever been recorded in the seam before.	22 August 1947	Explosion	County Durham	22
Ingham Colliery explosion, 1947 At a quarter past eleven on the night of 9 September 1947 firedamp exploded in the No. 2 South district of the Wheatley Lime seam at Ingham Colliery, Thornhill, near Dewsbury. The flame ran some three thousand yards. Eleven men are named among the dead and one, the shotfirer Jesse Clarke, was found alive three hours later. The chief inspector found that a flame safety lamp had been deliberately opened by cutting its lead rivet, and that a spark from its relighter had fired gas forced out of abandoned workings by a door put in half an hour earlier.	9 September 1947	Explosion	West Yorkshire	12