Show E1II MEN IN 1 ElH1 nARK DEPTHS I Imprisoned in a Busning Mine at White Oaks New Mexico ALL A PROBABLY BEAD But One Chance in a Thousand to Escape Rescuing Parties Who Took Their Llvc In Their hands Forced I Buck liy Ruvuiiisr Gases from the i BurulnfT and Charred Wood Will lie Impossible to Enter tie Mine TJittil TodayA miraculous Escape from Death Denver March 10A special tq the Rocky Mountain News from White II Oaks N M says At 3 oclock this morning fire broke out in the change room at the hoist house of the Old Abe mine and in a I few minutes the structure a large i and well built one was a mass of flames I was completely destroyed together with the wood and smith shops The mill sixty feet away escaped es-caped without damage The woodwork of the shaft was burned out and the hoisting machinery destroyed The damage runs high up into the thousands but the most distressing feature is the fact that eight men are I imprisoned in the dark depths whose fate is unknown There is little ground for hope that they have escaped suffocation I will not be possible to enter the mine to mach for them until some time tomorrow I to-morrow Rescuing parties have been I unable to get down further than the third level by the air shaft The smoke and gasses from the charred wood of the hoist shaft has penetrated the upper levels and it is impossible Ito I-to pass them 1 The entombed are I Charles Sherrick W J Williams Frank Wilson John Davis George Baxter White Jerry Conover and W B Mitchell Williams apd Sherrlck are old in mining experience and have faced like coolheaded dangers before They are and if any place of safety was to be found they found I The fire drove the engineer from the hoist while George Wilkinson was going down on the bucket He had reached the ninth level when the hoist was abandoned and was shot down 200 feet to the 13th when the bucket struck tipped and threw him into the drift He was stunned but recovered and climbed back to the second level and escaped back air shaft This is the only serious seri-ous mining accident here since the burning of the South Homestake shaft several years ago when two men were smothered |