| Show DEATH GAME TO MAN MNERS A Horrible Accident i a New Mexico Coal I Mine J 1 THIRTYSEVEN ARE DEAD lAn l-An Explosion of Fire Damp Was the Cause j TIie Ccrrllo Con Mine U UenthJ Trap WhlcU Claims Its Victims Criminally Iiia < Ie < inne Provlaioiu For Ventilation nnii Exit Ticrr j Mexico Experiences the 3Io C i Hcartrendiner Fatality i Hest i History For Mnny Yearn Til i Gruesome Detail 1 Cerrillos N I Feb 27The Whit Ah coal mine situated some threes miles from Cerrillos and operated bK the Santa Fe railway company wag the scene this morning of a frightful disaster whereby more than a score of miners each one of whom was the sole support of some dependent family I lost their lives Fourteen other miners were terribJy injured and perhaps I half of these will die as the result od I their burns and bruises I is 1 now believed that every mans I I has been accounted for Twentythrea I i5 the number of the dead recovered i Every entry in the mines has been explored f ex-plored and no more dead bodies have f been found Some of the rescued men were at deaths door but skillful r medical attention rayed their live The accident was caused by the explosion ex-plosion of sulphurated hydrogen encountered i en-countered in an abandoned drift followed I fol-lowed by the generation of fire damp Too much praise cannot be given tha T gallant and unselfish people of Cerril los and the heroic miners who mad 1 every possible effort to save their tel lowThe I The name of the driver who was killed at the mouth of the tunnel i3 John Bock a boy is The list of the Identified dead so fan isJ J R Donohue pit boss S Johnnie Bock trapper boy Sam Hardest miner I Elllngsworth Roy Phillips William Jones f Sam Jones S William T iklcCaty i < Tom Whtel Y John Sweeny John Eathorne 1 Tom Holliday Jules Descrant father Henry Descrant son I Louis Descrant son Angelo Buffato r Hicard Dero Ricad Hornet I f George pale I August Leplat D Sumitls I Henry Harben No one is t blame it was sImply one of those accidents that occur thaIs tha-is allOwing Owing to the smoke dust and noxious nox-ious vapor that filled every approach to the workings two hours elapsed t before any progress could be made toward t to-ward effecting a rescue and the efforts i were cruelly rewarded for up to 4 oclock but one miner had been reached His dead body was found t near the entrance Three hours later the rescuers succeeded in reaching tha left fourth level and the dead bodies of several men were brought out The I scenes about the mine were heartrending heart-rending in the extreme Frantic wives many of them carrying babies in theit1 i arms having children clinging to thelp skirts stood at the entrance of the r3 mine for hours amid tears and prayers r pray-ers watching and waiting while hundreds hun-dreds of men vainly struggled to gain an entrance further into the mine So 1 dense was the smoke at one time during dur-ing the afternoon that many thought the mine had taken fire and the conduct con-duct of the wives and mothers when this was announced as a probability was pitiful in the extreme Up to 5 oclock the gas continued to poutf forth from the single openIng open-Ing in the mine such volumes vol-umes as to make the progress of the rescuers very difficult but an hour later the nervous vapors cleared away and the work of recovering tile dead bodies began to prove more successful suc-cessful Twentytwo men are still lathe la-the lower workings of the mine and ifc is not thought possible that they ara olive The work of rescue goes on bravely Many heroic scenes have been witnessed wit-nessed during the afternoon and tonight to-night a gruesome spectacle Is pre scntccl Many camp fires dot the scene and the anguish of the women and children chil-dren hovering about them hoping fotf the best and urging them on in their endeavors to reach the entombed while others are clinging to their dead or ministering to those rescued alive presents a picture of human anguish seldom witnessed It is thought the explosion was caused by the miners breaking through into some old abandoned aban-doned workings thus liberating the gas that had accumulated therein The mine was worked through a single Incline shaft extending 2000 feet in at an incline of 30 degrees and seems to have been defective as respects ventilation venti-lation The mouth of the shaft is the sole means of egress Nobody seems to know just bow many men went into the mine this morning Ordinarily 150 men are employed but this being Ash Wednesday it is said scarcely half tha usual quota of men were at work today to-day Representative Laeden lately employed there says tonight that he la confident that not less than 85 men must have been in the mine at the time of the explosion A special to the Rocky Mountain News from Cerrllos says Up to 10 p m twentyfive bodies have been taken out horribly burned and mutilated and difficult of identification identifi-cation One of the rescued John < Stupes says that he heard the ex Jg plosion and himself and five comrades com-rades started for the main slope bub could not get out and retreated bacK Into the mine to a pool of water wherq they immersed themselves and bj agitating the water managed to create c air enough to live upon for the four long hours of their confinement but when the rescuing party reached them they were In the lost stages of a1 nhyxiatiou |
