Show FIRE CAUSED BY BLASTING jit is reported that the fire in the home stake mine in south dakota which occurred last september and which resulted in the necessity of flooding the mine to extinguish was caused by a single blast which ignited broken timber in an old filled that had been broken into by a new the broken ore waste and timber had arched and hung up about thirty feet above the grizzly and in blasting this down the fire started in the past there have been many such fires very serious ones have occurred in the deep lake superior mines manifestly the remedy is to use permissible explosives only as they would be very unlikely to cause ignition the bureau has repeatedly repeat ely advocated their use for this purpose because they were primarily planned for coal mining explosives plo metal miners have not fully appreciated precia ted their value in the prevention of fires in driving through old ground while it is a little more troublesome to keep two kinds of explosives on hand yet the resulting fires have been so serious leading to loss of life in a number of cases that it is a relatively small matter to take this important precaution TJ T S bureau of mines reports of investigations a |