Gresford disaster
The Gresford disaster occurred on 22 September 1934 at Gresford Colliery, near Wrexham, when an explosion and underground fire killed 261 men. Gresford is one of Britain's worst coal mining disasters: a controversial inquiry into the disaster did not conclusively identify a cause, though evidence suggested that failures in safety procedures and poor mine management were contributory factors. Further public controversy was caused by the decision to seal the colliery's damaged sections permanently, meaning that the bodies of only eight of the miners were ever recovered. Two of the three rescue men who died were brought out leaving the third body in situ until recovery operations began the following year.
Background
The Westminster and United Collieries Group began to sink the pit at Gresford in 1908. Two shafts were sunk apart: the Dennis and the Martin. They were named after Sir Theodore Martin, the company chairman, and Mabel Dennis, wife of the company managing director Henry Dyke Dennis, who had ceremonially cut the first sods for each of the respective shafts in November 1907. Work was completed in 1911. The mine was one of the two deepest in the Denbighshire Coalfield: the Dennis shaft reached depths of about and the Martin shaft about.By 1934, 2,200 coal miners were employed at the colliery, with 1,850 working underground and 350 on the surface. Three coal seams were worked at Gresford across several sections:
- Crank, a seam producing high-quality household coal.
- Brassey, a to seam delivering harder 'steam' coal for commercial use.
- Main, a seam that produced softer industrial coal.
The explosion occurred within the main seam of Dennis. This section, which began more than from the shaft bottom, was mined down a shallow gradient following the 1:10 dip of the seam. At the time of the disaster Dennis was divided into six "districts": 20's, 61's, 109's, 14's, 29's, and a very deep area known collectively as the "95's and 24's". Most districts in Dennis were worked by the longwall system where the coal face was mined in single blocks. Gresford was considered a modern pit by standards of the time and most districts in the Dennis section were mechanised except 20's and 61's, which were farthest from the main shaft and which were still worked by hand.
Evidence given at the inquiry into the disaster suggested there were a number of adverse conditions in the pit prior to the explosion. Firstly, underground mine ventilation in some districts of Dennis was probably inadequate; in particular, the 14's and 29's districts were notorious for poor air quality. The main return airway for the 109's, 14's and 29's districts was said to be by and far too small to provide adequate ventilation. Secondly, working conditions in the deep 95's and 24's district were always uncomfortably hot. Thirdly, it was alleged, there were also numerous breaches of safety regulations leading to the districts being in an unfit condition to operate.
The disaster inquiry was told that one of the pit deputies, whose job was to oversee the safety of a district, admitted that he also carried out shotfiring during his shifts, in addition to his other duties. It was revealed that he fired more charges during his shift than a full-time shotfirer could have safely carried out. The colliery had incurred an operating loss in 1933, and the pit manager, William Bonsall, is thought to have been under pressure from the Dennis family to increase profitability. Henry Dyke Dennis was reputed in the Wrexham district to be a forceful individual who had more control of the pit than the manager. Bonsall was not a trained mining engineer and at Gresford the role of mine agent, which would normally be held by a technically experienced person with authority to stand up to both manager and owners, had for some time been temporarily filled by the company secretary since the retirement of the previous agent Sydney Cockin. Gresford had previously had a good safety record, but there were suggestions that in the two years Bonsall had not had Cockin to help him the pit's management had come under increasing commercial pressure. Bonsall admitted he had spent little time in the Dennis section of the pit in the months before the disaster, as he was overseeing the installation of new machinery in the "Slant", an area in the South-East section. Work on improving the Dennis section ventilation had been halted, and the inquiry's chair later confessed to "an uneasy feeling that Mr. Bonsall was overridden" on the matter.
Explosion
On Saturday 22 September 1934 at approximately 2:00 am a violent explosion ripped through the Dennis section. The explosion started a fire near 29's district and blocked the main access road, known as "142's Deep", to all the section's other districts. At the time up to 500 men were working underground on the night shift with more than half in the affected areas. The rest were in the Slant district of the South-East section about from the explosion; many there were unaware for some time afterwards that a disaster had occurred.In Dennis the night overman, Fred Davies, who was on duty at the bottom of the main shaft, heard a crashing sound and was enveloped in a cloud of dust for around 30 seconds. When it cleared he telephoned the surface and told Bonsall, the manager: "something has happened down the Dennis. I think it has fired." Bonsall immediately went into the mine to try to establish what had occurred. At approximately 3:30 am the afternoon shift overman, Benjamin Edwards, reported that parts of the Dennis main road were on fire beyond a junction, known as the Clutch, where the haulage motors were located, and that a large number of miners were trapped beyond the blaze. Meanwhile, the shift that was working the Slant was ordered to the pit bottom and told to get out of the mine.
Only six men had escaped from the Dennis section, all of whom were working in 29's district: Robert Andrews, Cyril Challoner, Thomas Fisher, David Jones, Albert Samuels, and Jack Samuels. Some of the group were sitting taking a mid-shift break about north of the Clutch when the initial explosion happened. Jack Samuels, in his testimony at the inquest, described hearing a "violent thud followed at once by dust" while at the face and commenting "that's the bloody bottom gone". By the "bottom", Samuels clarified that he meant 14's district, which lay below them. A colleague advised them to leave the district via the "wind road" which was the 29's air return drift. Samuels told a further 30 men working in the 29's district to follow. But as the six-man lead group went ahead attempting to fan the air to mitigate the effects of the deadly afterdamp, they soon realised the other miners had not followed them. Jack Samuels described how Jones repeatedly fell back, commenting he was "done", but Samuels told him to "stick it" and shouldered the deputy up a ladder; Samuels was commended at the inquest for his bravery and leadership of the group. After a long and difficult escape up 1:3 gradients, several ladders, and past rockfalls, the six miners eventually rejoined the Dennis main road and met Andrew Williams, the under-manager, who along with Bonsall had immediately descended the Dennis main shaft on being notified of the explosion. Williams took David Jones and went on towards the Clutch, while the remaining five went to the pit bottom and safety.
Beyond the Clutch, Williams found three falls in the main haulage road. Once he got past them he discovered a fire had started about 20 yards before the main entrance to 29's district, blocking escape from the districts further inbye, and immediately sent back for men and materials to fight it. The evidence of Williams, Bonsall and Ben Edwards, who all saw the fire at this critical point, differed on how large it was: Bonsall thought they could not get close enough to it to fight it, but Edwards, who was able to view the burning spot directly, said that it did "not seem much of a fire", and the final report of the inquest was inconclusive as to whether the fire could have been put out at this stage if better equipment had been to hand. Williams and the overman Fred Davies made an initial attempt to get up to the fire using breathing apparatus, but were driven back by fumes.
Rescue attempts
Shortly before dawn, volunteers began entering the pit with ponies to tackle the fire and help clear debris. The area's trained mine rescue teams were alerted, though there were delays in doing so which were later suggested to reflect management disorganisation. In the interim many volunteers from the area's mines were sent below to assist: a manager from another colliery, sent down at about 4:30 am, described his attempts to extinguish the fires. Seven dead miners, all men who had been working near the Clutch, were soon brought to the surface. By 5:00 am the Gresford rescue team was already in the pit and some of the teams from the neighbouring Llay Main Colliery were at the surface, though they grew increasingly frustrated while waiting to be called down.At 8:40 am, the 18-man Llay team finally received a call down the pit and went in accompanied by a Gresford miner who was to show them the way. In a somewhat disorganised fashion John Charles Williams and his two rescue men making up the No. 1 Llay team, along with a Gresford rescue man W. Hughes, were instructed by the Gresford staff then below ground to check the mile-long return airway of the 20's district. Bonsall later stated that his intent had only been that the team establish the atmosphere in the return: he claimed that his order had been "not to go in until they got definite instructions from me, because what I had in my mind was that it would be charged with carbon monoxide, and I did not want them to go through that because there would not be the slightest chance of getting men back through it." The instruction was, however, misinterpreted by a deputy as meaning that the team should physically enter the return; accordingly the rescue team entered the airway using breathing apparatus, despite the fact that their canary died instantly. Williams, the team's leader, ordered them back when after several hundred yards after the airway ahead narrowed to by 3 ft and less. Two of the team then in Williams' words "seemed to get alarmed" and collapsed, possibly after removing their nose clips; Williams then tried dragging a third team member for over towards safety before being overcome himself by poisonous gases. Williams would be the only survivor; he was said by his family to be the man who later wrote the anonymous broadside ballad "The Gresford Disaster", which was highly critical of the mine's management.
Despite the fact that the carbon monoxide levels in the 20's return suggested that no one farther inbye could be left alive, rescue efforts became focused on trying to fight the fire at 29's Turn, using sand, stone dust, and extinguishers. The miners trapped in the most northerly districts, the 20's and 61's, would have been more than on the other side of the fire, and rockfalls at the entrance to the 29's soon made it clear there was little chance of escape for the men trapped in the affected districts. As the falls were levelled, the fire become more severe: Parry Davies, captain of the Llay No. 2 rescue team, described the whole end of the level as "one mass of flame, the coal sides of the roadway, burning in one white mass, and the more stones we moved to one side, the more air we put on to the flames It was most peculiar to see the flames from that fire, all the colours of the rainbow, a sight which I will never forget."
By early Saturday morning large crowds of concerned relatives and off-duty miners had gathered silently at the pit head awaiting news. Hopes were raised in the evening when rumours began circulating that the fire in the Dennis main road was being brought under control; families waiting at the surface were told rescue teams would soon be able to reach the miners in the 29's, the nearest district beyond the Clutch.
However, by Sunday evening it became clear that conditions in the pit had become extremely hazardous. Fire took hold in 29's haulage road as well as 142's Deep, and the rescue teams were withdrawn as further explosions took place behind a heavy fall on the far side of the fire. Relatives were told the shafts into the Dennis section would be capped because no one could have survived and it was far too dangerous to try to recover any further bodies. The final man to leave the pit, John McGurk, president of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation, commented, "There is no chance that any man is alive. I have been down in pits after ten explosions, but I have never seen anything like this. From the point where the fire is raging for twenty yards the stones are red-hot".
More explosions continued to occur within the pit over the next few days. On 25 September, a surface worker named George Brown became the 265th victim when he was killed by flying debris after one blast blew the cap off the Dennis shaft.