Other disasters

A qualifying incident that does not fit the above.

See all disasters, including filtering by type.

11 disasters, in date order.

Disaster	Date	Type	Region	Fatalities
1870s
Cwmorthin fatal accident and mine-status test case A fatal accident at Cwmorthin — nicknamed 'The Slaughterhouse' after 21 workers died there between 1875 and 1893 — led to a test case that reclassified the site as a mine rather than an exempt quarry under new safety law, and the company was wound up soon after.	1875	Other	Gwynedd	1
1880s
Boosbeck subsidence, 1883 Pillar extraction beneath the ironstone-mining village of Boosbeck caused widespread ground subsidence from mid-1883, damaging up to 200 houses across several streets; a 1884 court finding of improper working ruined the landowner and hastened the mine's own closure within a few years. No deaths or injuries are recorded.	from July 1883	Other	North Yorkshire	0
Drakewalls Mine Entombment and Rescue, 1889 Two miners filling a worked-out area at Drakewalls Mine were buried when the sand they were releasing ran too fast. After two nights of failed attempts, a second rescue led by the pitman Thomas Chapman blasted a channel down to them with small charges of dynamite, and both were pulled out alive at midnight after food and water had been lowered 18 fathoms to them.	5 February 1889	Other	Cornwall	0
1890s
Featherstone Massacre During the national coal lockout of 1893, a crowd of over 2,000 gathered at Ackton Hall Colliery amid rumours that coal was being moved out to break the strike. After the Riot Act was read and the crowd failed to disperse, soldiers of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry opened fire; two bystanders, James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan, were fatally wounded and died the next day. The event became known as the Featherstone Massacre, a landmark moment in British labour history.	7 September 1893	Other	West Yorkshire	2
Plumbley Colliery drownings On the evening of 16 March 1895 three children fell through the ice on a pond at Plumbley Colliery, near Eckington in Derbyshire, and drowned; Alfred Williamson, an engineman at the colliery, died trying to save them.	16 March 1895	Other	South Yorkshire	4
1910s
Disappearance of Thomas Severn, Mapperley Colliery, 1918 Thomas Severn, the 43-year-old undermanager of Mapperley Colliery, vanished underground during his shift on 5 June 1918 while inspecting the workings alone, and was never found despite a two-month search costing £2,000; no body, lamp or other trace ever turned up, and the cause of his disappearance remains formally unresolved.	5 June 1918	Other	Derbyshire	1
1920s
Clyde Colliery boiler-house wall collapse, 1924 Shortly after noon on 29 November 1924 two boiler firemen at Clyde Colliery, Hamilton, were firing a battery of Lancashire boilers when the eight-foot brick wall behind them, holding back a stack of fuel, gave way under its weight and buried them. Philip Cundalen and Arthur Roadnight were killed outright. The Inspector found the wall had been built without buttresses.	1924	Other	South Lanarkshire	2
Pendleton Colliery Floor Heave, 1925 At 3,550 feet — among the deepest workings in Britain — the floor of Pendleton Colliery's Rams seam suddenly heaved upward without warning, killing six men in a genuine rockburst, or 'crump'.	4 November 1925	Other	Greater Manchester	6
Alderley Edge West Mine deaths Two men, George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield, died after going into the disused West Mine and losing their way in its passages; their bodies were not found for three months.	May 1929	Other	Cheshire	2
1940s
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
2010s
Boulby Mine gas blowout, 2016 Miner John Anderson, 56, was killed at Boulby Mine on 17 June 2016 by a sudden, powerful release of trapped gas — a 'gas blowout' around 15 metres across that displaced an estimated 1,000 tonnes of mineral, described by one expert witness as the biggest such blowout he had ever seen. It followed a separate fire at the mine only two months earlier that had injured seven workers.	17 June 2016	Other	North Yorkshire	1