MineArchiveExplosion disasters
Firedamp, coal dust or blasting explosions underground.
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34 disasters in the 1900s, of 502.
| Disaster | Date | Type | Region | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Boston Pit shaft-sinking explosion, 1900 At about 5 a.m. on 29 June 1900 gas burst from the floor of the main shaft being sunk at Richard Evans and Company's Old Boston Colliery, Haydock, and caught fire at the sinkers' candles. All ten men at the bottom were burned; eight died. |
1900 | Explosion | Lancashire | 8 |
| Portland Colliery Nursery Pit explosion, 1900 On 17 August 1900 men re-opening a sealed section of the Nursery Pit, about a mile from the shaft under Struthers farm, blew down the brick stopping with two shots of blasting gelatine and fired the gas behind it. They withdrew, but about an hour later a second explosion caught nine of them. John Gemmell senior died at the pithead and five more in Kilmarnock Infirmary over the next week, among them his son and the new undermanager, Andrew Johnstone. |
17 August 1900 | Explosion | East Ayrshire | 6 |
| Orrell Colliery explosion, 1901 On Wednesday 10 April 1901 four men salvaging machinery from the just-abandoned Orrell Four Feet at Walthew House, Orrell, were caught when the fireman fired a roburite charge to break an iron cog-wheel. The shot set off a coal-dust explosion that ran along the main roads. Two died at once and two about a week later. |
10 April 1901 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 4 |
| Senghenydd colliery disaster, 1901 Three underground explosions killed 81 miners at Universal Colliery as the night shift was leaving — an earlier disaster at the same colliery that struck again, far more severely, in 1913. |
24 May 1901 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 81 |
| Llanbradach Colliery Explosion, 1901 An explosion in the Pretoria district of the No. 2 pit at Llanbradach Colliery on the evening of 10 September 1901 killed eight men and forty-one pit ponies. Only fourteen men were underground at the time — ostlers, firemen and repairers preparing for a shift due down at six o'clock. The inquest jury found that coal dust had been ignited by shot-firing at a place that had not been sufficiently watered. |
10 September 1901 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 8 |
| Garswood Hall No. 9 sinking explosion, 1902 Early on 2 April 1902 the No. 9 sinking shaft at Garswood Hall Colliery, Edge Green, had just reached the gassy Ravin seam at 270 yards when gas filling the shaft was fired, almost certainly by the electric light hung in it. The blast wrecked the forty-foot headgear; the banksman and most of the men at the bottom were killed. |
2 April 1902 | Explosion | Greater Manchester | 14 |
| Glencraig Colliery explosion, 1902 A firedamp explosion followed by afterdamp killed four men working in two parallel underground roadways at Glencraig Colliery on 3 April 1902 — one of three serious multi-fatality accidents in Fife within little more than a year. |
3 April 1902 | Explosion | Fife | 4 |
| Fochriw Colliery Explosion, 1902 A fall of roof released a body of firedamp at Fochriw Colliery, which was ignited by a naked light, killing eight miners. |
4 June 1902 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 8 |
| McLaren Colliery Explosion, 1902 An explosion at McLaren Colliery, Abertysswg, on 3 September 1902 killed seventeen men. The colliery was five years old, and the village around it younger still; the dead came from the new streets of Abertysswg and from Tredegar down the valley, and the youngest of them was seventeen. |
3 September 1902 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 17 |
| Tylorstown Colliery shaft explosion, 1905 On 30 October 1905 an explosion caused by a blower of gas killed two sinkers and injured five in a shaft being sunk at Tylorstown Colliery, in the Rhondda Fach. |
30 October 1905 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 2 |
| Elba Colliery explosion Firedamp exploded in the Elba drift at Gowerton in the early hours of Saturday 21 January 1905, described as one of the worst explosions ever to occur in the western part of the South Wales coalfield. Nearly fifty men had gone below at the start of the shift. Eleven died, three of them found alive and dying soon afterwards, and most of the rest were burned or badly shocked. The last bodies were not recovered until the Monday. |
21 January 1905 | Explosion | Swansea | 11 |
| Cambrian Colliery explosion, 1905 A firedamp explosion at Cambrian Colliery's No.1 pit in Clydach Vale killed 35 men on the night of 10 March 1905, apparently ignited when a bratticeman's safety lamp broke against falling rock; a five-day underground fire that followed prevented any further rescue. |
10 March 1905 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 35 |
| National Colliery explosion, 1905 A firedamp explosion in the Nine Feet seam workings at National Colliery, Wattstown, on the morning of 11 July 1905 killed 119 of the 122 men and boys at work there, one of the worst disasters in the history of the South Wales coalfield. |
11 July 1905 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 119 |
| Cwrt Herbert Colliery explosion, 1906 At ten to four on the afternoon of Friday 1 June 1906 gas reached a gob fire in the Four Feet seam at Cwrt Herbert Colliery, near Neath Abbey, and exploded in two flashes near the deepest part of a slant running 800 yards from the pit bottom. Four colliers were seriously injured and five fatally burned, among them two fathers and their sons, dying over the following eight days. The fire could not be controlled, and the workings were flooded. |
1 June 1906 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| Wingate Grange Colliery explosion, 1906 Wingate Grange, a colliery of some 1,200 underground workers in east Durham, exploded on the night shift of Sunday 14 October 1906, killing twenty-six men. The inspectors' report traced the deaths seam by seam -- a shifter blown into the downcast shaft, a stoneman killed by violence and burning on the engine plane, five men lost to afterdamp in the Five Quarter. At the inquest the Home Office was represented by counsel, and the evidence turned on a shot fired to clear a stone fall, and on the single naked light allowed in a pit otherwise worked with safety lamps. |
14 October 1906 | Explosion | County Durham | 26 |
| Albion Colliery explosion, 1906 At about 3.10 p.m. on Saturday 10 November 1906, after the day shift had ended, an explosion of firedamp in C district of the No. 1 seam at the Albion Colliery, Cilfynydd, killed repairers and officials at work there. It was put down to a spark from an electric lamp relighter. |
1906 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 6 |
| Genwen Colliery explosion, 1907 An explosion in the Four Feet headings of the small Genwen Colliery near Llanelli on 5 March 1907 killed four miners, and two volunteers who went down the return airway afterwards died in the afterdamp. Screw-locked lamps, no lampman and poorly organised exploration drew criticism; the manager was fined and the pit was abandoned. |
5 March 1907 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 6 |
| Seven Sisters Colliery Explosion, 1907 An underground explosion at Seven Sisters Colliery on 10 November 1907 killed five men. It was attributed to a defective safety lamp, and the manager afterwards prosecuted both the fireman who had an unlocked lamp underground and the surface lampman who had let a defective one be given out. Both were convicted. |
10 November 1907 | Explosion | Neath Port Talbot | 5 |
| William Pit No. 6 Drift explosion, 1907 At about 1.50 p.m. on 26 November 1907 an explosion in No. 6 or 'Taffy's' Drift, a stone drift being driven under the sea at the Whitehaven Colliery Company's William Pit, killed five men and injured seven. |
1907 | Explosion | Cumbria | 5 |
| Dinas Main Colliery explosion, 1907 At about a quarter past two on the pay Saturday of 14 December 1907 an explosion at Dinas Main Colliery, Gilfach Goch, killed seven of the twelve men underground; the fireman David Meyrick led the other four out through old workings. |
14 December 1907 | Explosion | Rhondda Cynon Taf | 7 |
| Pantyffynnon Colliery explosion, 1908 On the afternoon of 28 January 1908 gas exploded in the No. 1 East Level of the Upper Pumpquart seam at Pantyffynnon Colliery, Ammanford, while 200 men were underground. Gas had been troubling the district for weeks, and the men had been told that morning not to fire shots. The explosion was put down to shotfiring. Two colliers, Gwilym Griffiths and William Roberts, died of their burns and four others were badly burnt. The owner and manager were prosecuted over ventilation, and the manager was fined £10. |
28 January 1908 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 2 |
| Mary Colliery firedamp explosion, 1908 Late on Sunday 2 February 1908 a series of four firedamp explosions in the Mynheer seam of the Fife Coal Company's Mary Pit at Lochore killed three young men, blown down the shaft from the seam bottom, and burned five others. The inquiry found the gas had been fired by a spark from the electric motor driving the fan. |
2 February 1908 | Explosion | Fife | 3 |
| Washington Glebe Colliery explosion, 1908 The Glebe Pit at Washington was four years old when it exploded on 20 February 1908, killing fourteen people and five ponies. Its shafts had been sunk through the surface deposits by the freezing process to the Low Main seam at 114 fathoms, and it was in the Low Main, where whole working had begun only sixteen months before, that the explosion started and stayed. The inspector's report set out the shotfiring with permitted explosives fired by battery, and noted that the air had not been measured since five days before the explosion. |
20 February 1908 | Explosion | Tyne and Wear | 14 |
| Norton Hill Colliery explosion, 1908 On the night of 9 April 1908 the examiner Charles Burge fired a shot in the roof of the dusty Slyving Vein Incline at Norton Hill Colliery, Midsomer Norton, and set off a coal-dust explosion that killed him and nine others, the youngest fourteen, with five horses. |
1908 | Explosion | Somerset | 10 |
| Bothwell Castle Colliery explosion, 1908 On 11 May 1908 an explosion of firedamp killed two men at Bothwell Castle Colliery, near Uddingston, ignited by a lamp whose gauze had been broken. |
11 May 1908 | Explosion | South Lanarkshire | 2 |
| Maypole Colliery explosion, 1908 At ten past five in the evening of 18 August 1908, an explosion of firedamp and coal dust tore through the Four Feet seam at Maypole Colliery, Abram, killing 76 men — Wigan's worst mining disaster. The blast wrecked the pithead winding gear and the fan house that ventilated the whole mine, and it took until 1917, nine years later, to recover the last body. |
18 August 1908 | Explosion | Lancashire | 76 |
| Big Pit explosion (1908) A localised underground explosion killed three men. |
11 December 1908 | Explosion | Torfaen | 3 |
| West Stanley Colliery explosion, 1909 A coal-dust explosion at West Stanley Colliery — the Burns Pit — on the afternoon of 16 February 1909 killed some 167 men and boys across four seams, among them children of thirteen and fourteen. Around thirty came out alive, twenty-six of them led out by a deputy who kept them together in the dark. |
16 February 1909 | Explosion | County Durham | 167 |
| Bersham Colliery explosion, 1909 A shot fired at the far end of the No.2 West Level ignited a pocket of firedamp at Bersham Colliery on 3 August 1909, killing eight men. |
3 August 1909 | Explosion | Wrexham | 8 |
| Graig Merthyr Colliery explosion, 1909 In the early hours of Friday 1 October 1909, as the night shift at Graig Merthyr Colliery in the Cwmdulais valley was about to leave, a pocket of gas exploded and killed five colliers and injured another. An open lamp was found at the face, and the Inspector thought the gas might have gathered in small coal lying on the floor, but he could offer no firm explanation. Three weeks later a fall of stone at the same colliery killed two more men. |
1 October 1909 | Explosion | Swansea | 5 |
| Birchrock Colliery explosion, 1909 At about 3.30 a.m. on 1 October 1909 a naked light left in No. 4 heading at Birchrock Colliery, Pontardulais, ignited gas that had built up after brattice sheeting was knocked down, and the explosion killed five men. The jury found the deaths accidental, due to an open lamp, and exonerated the fireman. |
1 October 1909 | Explosion | Swansea | 5 |
| Caedean Slant explosion, 1909 In the early hours of 22 October 1909 gas exploded in the Caedean slant at Trimsaran, near Kidwelly, among eight men cutting a new airway through the coal. The colliery had recently been flooded, and the airway was meant to improve poor ventilation and help clear the water. The gas was thought to have been fired by a spark from an electric pump motor nearby. All eight were burnt. Four died over the following week: Owen Thomas, Ted Darke, and two collier's boys of sixteen, John Williams and David Sparry. |
22 October 1909 | Explosion | Carmarthenshire | 4 |
| Darran Colliery Explosion, 1909 At about four on the morning of Friday 29 October 1909, with fifty night-shift men underground, Darran Colliery exploded. The blast vented up the upcast shaft and shattered the pit-head casing, and it disabled the winding shaft. Twenty-seven died — five of them rescuers whose breathing apparatus did not hold enough oxygen to get them out again. |
29 October 1909 | Explosion | Caerphilly | 27 |
| Gurnos Colliery Explosion, 1909 A shot fired at the face just before 5 am ignited gas and engulfed the men nearby in flames, fatally burning the collier who had prepared it and burning the fireman. A repairer working further off, unhurt by the blast, set off towards the return airway rather than out of the mine and was later found a few yards away, overcome by gas. |
17 December 1909 | Explosion | Powys | 2 |