Coal Glen, May
27—The mine of the Carolina Coal Company today became the scene of the greatest
mine disaster in the history of North Carolina when three successive explosions
deep in the bowels of the earth entombed 59 miners, every one of whom tonight
was believed to be dead.
At 7:20 the first
six bodies were brought to the surface. No trace has been found yet of the
remaining 53 believed to be in the mine. Rescue workers, digging on hourly
shifts and desperately attacking the piles of debris that closed the main
shaft, are fighting ahead with every ounce of strength and skill they possess
to reach their comrades.
Claude Scott, in
active charge of the rescue work, and Dr. J.F. Foster, one of the medical corps
in charge of the arrangements on top, said tonight at 9 o’clock that they did
not believe any man would be brought up alive. Others are more optimistic.
Six Bodies Brought
Up
The known dead,
whose bodies were brought out, are:
Archie Hollins,
white,
Hollins Richardson,
white,
William E. Byerley,
white,
William Irick,
negro,
James Williams,
negro
A sixth negro,
unidentified.
All these men were
killed almost certainly by the force of one of the explosions, either the
second or the third. They were found first by Howard Butler, acting
superintendent of the mine, and Joe Richardson, a machinist, when these two
plunged down the shaft immediately after the first explosion. Butler and
Richardson found them about 1,000 feet down, or about 500 feet in a vertical
line from the top of the ground, dazed, bruised, but still breathing.
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