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CAUSES OF THE DEATHS.

The circumstances attending the deaths of persons within the area of the flame and force of an explosion can alone afford any evidence as to the immediate cause of the explosion, but there are important considerations as regards the safest course to be followed by persons in the seam or mine outside such area, particularly in the case of those so situated that roads full of after-damp lie between them and the shafts, which make it necessary to describe in some detail the remaining deaths, as well as stating the reasons why others escaped.

The deaths of all the victims of the explosion, except Dixon, Elliott, Bloomfield and Maddison, were due to after-damp, met with as they were endeavouring to reach the shafts by the intake air ways. Their lamps were found near where they were overcome, and in one or two cases the lamps were still burning. They had assumed the clothes they usually discard while working and had all been at work at the moment of the explosion.

The persons rescued from the Five Quarter and Low Main seams were all engaged in their ordinary work near the faces when the explosion occurred, and, like their fellow workmen from the faces who lost their lives, were fully clothed and had their lighted lamps with them. The reason of their escape was that they had been later in coming out, and the after-damp was sufficiently diluted, or swept away through the damaged stoppings and air-crossings into the return air ways, to allow of their passing through the dangerous zone; or they may have been better able to withstand its effects, or may have retired in-bye when they found they were becoming affected. This latter course was certainly followed by the majority of one party from the 2nd East way, who, hastening out-bye, found the air impure and four of them retreated, two of the number would not be advised, and hurrying out were overcome and lost their lives. The four who retired in-bye were acting under the advice of one of the examiners, an experienced miner named William Peat, who conducted them beyond the landing in the 1st East way into the return air way, where they waited until found uninjured by a rescue party at about 8 p.m. on the day following the explosion.

Edward Murton, the master-shifter, the official in charge of the Low Main seam, was in the Stable way district at the time of the explosion; he felt a movement of the air, but attributed it to a heavy fall of stone somewhere, and attached no importance to it, and did not leave the district till 1.20 a.m., when he proceeded out-bye to visit other districts in the ordinary course of his duty. He found evidences of disturbance and after-damp on his way out, and came upon the body of Bloomfield, and then realised that something untoward had occurred. He very nobly determined to warn the men he had left, and retraced his steps for more than a mile. By this action, not thinking of himself but of others, he probably saved his life, as, had he persevered out-bye, as a person of less nerve would have done, he would have been overcome by the after-damp, which some time after was sufficiently strong to overcome one of the men, H. Pace, he brought out with him after his return to the face.

Had all the persons working at the faces in the Low Main seam remained there it is not improbable that they would all have been rescued.

It is easy to understand that after an explosion the first impulse is to get to the shafts, but it is an impulse that has led to the loss of many lives, both in this and other explosions.

Had it not been for the existence of the drop staple it is probable that no lives, except that of Dixon, would have been lost in the upper seams. When the casing enclosing the upcast shaft at the Low Main seam was blown down, the bulk of the air from the downcast shaft passed direct to the upcast shaft by the haulage road connecting them; the drop staple, filled with heated air and after-damp, would become an upcast, and most of the after-damp between it and the downcast shaft would ascend and pour into the Main Coal seam, as well, possibly, as some of the after-damp further in. This after-damp mixing with the intake air passing in-bye in the Main Coal seam and up the drift to the Five Quarter seam was sufficient to cause the deaths.

It is not probable that sufficient after-damp would be forced into the downcast shaft to affect the seams above, and this is the less likely as little or none reached the lower seams, the persons there, who were, however, nearly all at the working faces, suffered no inconvenience from it, and it may be further stated that the horses and ponies in the stables in the Main Coal seam, situated between the downcast shaft and the drop staple, were all found alive after the explosion, showing that no great quantity of after-damp had gone up the shaft.