Wood Pit Colliery
The Wood Pit disaster was a mining accident on 7 June 1878, when an underground gas explosion occurred at the Wood Pit, in Haydock, then in the Historic counties of England, historic county of Lancashire, in North West England. The official death toll was 189 although contemporary reports at first stated that over 200 had been killed. Background The Wood Pit was one of at least 20 collieries in the area operated by the mining company Haydock Collieries. It consisted of the Ravenshead mine and the Florida mine which were linked by a tunnel. The pit had been sunk in 1866. There had been at least two previous major explosions in the area, claiming 26 lives in April 1869 and 58 in December of the same year. The pit had a chronic problem with firedamp and as a precaution, explosives were never used, with miners relying on picks to manually extract the coal. In addition, workers were equipped with specially-designed safety lamps to prevent accidental ignition of gas. Most of the mine w ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]