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The Right Honourable Lord Mills, K.B.E.,

Minister of Power.

My Lord,

In accordance with your direction given under the terms of Section 121 of the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, I have investigated the causes and circumstances of the accident which occurred at Sutton Colliery in the County of Nottinghamshire on 21st February, 1957.

I received, and was glad to comply with, a request from representatives of the National Union of Mineworkers (Nottingham Area) to meet their technical advisers who had investigated this accident and wanted to make available to me their findings. I met them at the Divisional Office, Nottingham, on 30th May and they were very helpful.

The Inquest was delayed until men who had been severely burnt had recovered sufficiently to give evidence. At Mansfield, on 7th October, 1957, I attended when H.M. Coroner, sitting with a jury, resumed the Inquest. An open verdict was returned.

On 21st February, 1957, at about 11.30 a.m., firedamp was ignited at the intake roadhead of No. 28's fully mechanised longwall face in No. 28's district in the Low Main seam when a stone about 3 feet by 3 feet by 1½ feet fell from the insufficiently secured top or sides of a cavity about 36 feet long, 9 to 12 feet wide and 10 to 12 feet high above the roadway supports. This cavity was left by previous falls of roof in the intake roadhead. The stone struck the cast steel terminal box of a 50 H.P. motor driving a face conveyor and smashed it, causing an electrical short circuit and an incendive flash before the automatic devices for cutting off the supply of electricity had time to operate.

Apparently firedamp was brought down from the roof cavity by the stone as it fell and was thus in the vicinity of the incendive electrical short circuit flash where it was ignited. The flame, fed by firedamp from the cavity and possibly by firedamp previously spilling from the cavity and trailing along the roof along the coal face and back along the roof of the intake gate against a very sluggish air current, travelled the whole length of the face, a distance of 150 yards, and also about the same distance back along the intake airway. Coal dust did not play any part in propagation of the flame. The flame burned 25 persons, of whom five died subsequently. Twenty-two of them were at or near the coal face; one was the loader gate and face conveyor attendant who was at the roadhead with the undermanager and the deputy at the time.