Explosion disasters

Firedamp, coal dust or blasting explosions underground.

See all disasters, including filtering by type.

7 disasters in the 1800s, of 502.

Disaster	Date	Type	Region	Fatalities
Wallsend Colliery C Pit explosion, 1803 In September 1803 an explosion described at the time as a 'heavy fire' swept the bords of the C Pit at Wallsend Colliery, killing thirteen men and boys and burning twenty others. Most died of suffocation.	September 1803	Explosion	Tyne and Wear	13
Hurlet Colliery explosion, 1805 At about nine on the morning of Monday 22 April 1805 firedamp exploded in a pit of the Hurlet coal work near Paisley. Four men were blown out of the shaft; thirteen below were found dead, and the father of one of them was suffocated going down to save them.	1805	Explosion	Renfrewshire	18
Hebburn Colliery Explosion, 1805 A firedamp explosion at Hebburn Colliery on 21 October 1805 killed between 32 and 35 men and boys, leaving five widows and eighty-one orphaned children — a tragedy that directly inspired Newcastle physician Dr. Thomas Trotter's pioneering pamphlet on preventing mine gas explosions.	21 October 1805	Explosion	Tyne and Wear	32
Fenton Park Colliery explosion Ten men were about to begin the day’s work in one of the Fenton Park pits when firedamp exploded. Seven were killed; the other three were got out alive by the colliery company. Six men had died in the same pit from the same cause within the previous twelve months.	1806	Explosion	Staffordshire	7
Mostyn Colliery explosions, 1806 Two firedamp explosions at Mostyn Colliery on the Dee estuary in Flintshire in 1806 killed thirty-six men between them, by the most widely repeated count. The Coal Mining History Resource Centre's list reads the same record differently: thirty-six in the first explosion and about thirty more in the second. A fire in 1807 and another explosion in 1809 followed at the same colliery.	1806	Explosion	Flintshire	36
Harraton Colliery explosion, 1808 A firedamp explosion at Harraton Colliery's Row Pit on 29 November 1808 killed at least four men, including the overman, and left fourteen burnt, some fatally, after a party carrying a lit torch through old workings strayed near a pair of leaking dams; a second explosion during the rescue attempt killed the overman and two companions.	29 November 1808	Explosion	Tyne and Wear	4
Mostyn Colliery Explosion, 1809 An explosion at Mostyn Colliery, Flintshire, on 10 March 1809 killed twenty-two men — the second disaster at the pit in under two years, after the twenty-six deaths of April 1807. The Durham Mining Museum records the date and the toll and carries a memorial entry; the explosion itself is not described and none of the dead is named.	10 March 1809	Explosion	Flintshire	22