Fire-damp

Firedamp

The second greatest* mining catastrophy known in Germany occurred in the Minister Stein/- mine at Dortmund when 200 or more miners perished in an explosion of fire-damp.**

Thus, while in the U. S. anxious men and women kept a nerve-straining vigil at Sand Cave where Floyd Collins was buried alive, and a horrified nation clung bravely to hope, crowds of weeping German women and children surrounded the Stein pithead, breaking police cordons in their desperate grief, while a whole nation poured out its sympathy.

President Ebert telegraphed his condolences to the Mining Superintendent of Dortmund, informed him that 50,000 marks ($12,500) from the President's emergency fund had been placed at his disposal for relief of widows and orphans of the victims. Chancellor Luther cut short a political visit to Baden to dash to Dortmund. Telegrams poured in from many notables.

The explosion was thought to have taken place near the shaft and its force was felt in all three levels of the mine. Miners near the shaft were blown to pieces, others were killed by suffocation. At one point, an inscription was found chalked up on the wall: "All well up to 11 o'clock. Nine men." Under the inscription lay the nine men--all dead. At another place, three brothers were found dead, locked in one another's arms.

The mine belongs to the Stinnes group and was held to be one of the world's model mines. It has not had an accident since 1901.

*The greatest mining disaster occurred in 1909 at the Radbon mine, in which 341 men perished. ,,

/- The Minister Stein mine is named after the celebrated Heinrich Friedrich Karl, Baron vom und zum Stein, German statesman (1757-1831).

** Firedamp is a gas given oft by coal when freshly exposed to the atmosphere, which, when mixed with from four to twelve times its volume of air, is explosive. A common name for it is marsh gas; in substance, it is carbureted hydrogen, oxygen and mtn gen.