Single Record

Full Details

Surname

ALEXANDER

Forename

James Dougal

Day

16

Month

05

Year

1926

Age

Occupation

Mine/Quarry Name

Blackhill (a)

Mineral Worked

Coal

Owner

Summerlee Iron Co. Ltd

Location

Bishopbriggs

County

Lanarkshire

Details of Event

Information from the Inspectors of Mines - 1926: Underground Fire: At Blackhill Colliery, Lanark, a double fatality occurred from an underground fire on 15th May early in the stoppage. The colliery is worked with naked lights and there were four electrically-driven pumps staged down a long dook which was also the intake airway. Each pump sat at the side of this dook road, which was also the haulage road and carried the electric cable. The roof was very broken and dry and was heavily timbered. On the night of the accident there were only three men in the pit, a pit bottomer, a fireman and a pump attendant. The fireman and pump attendant together travelled from pump to pump and attended to them. They did not require to go off the intake airway. What caused it will never be known, but a fire began in the region of the second pump from the top of the dook while the two men were inbye, and it was some hours before it was discovered by the pit bottomer; by that time the dook road was not travellable and the return airway was also full of smoke. The fire in the main intake had caused a fall and vain attempt were made to overcome the fire and to cut a way past the pump There was a large extent of longwall workings away from the dook road at the dook bottom and it was known the fireman and pumper were men of resource and intelligence, who had been known, following experience in the adjoining Cadder Colliery, to discuss what they would do under different sets of circumstances should such a thing as an underground fire ever occur where they were employed. Judging what they would do if they had had a chance, the air was not reversed until all hope of cutting through and extinguishing the fire was gone because reversal could well have been fatal if the men were still alive. Their bodies were found not far from the main intake and it was evident they had been killed shortly after the fire began and before they had any chance to escape, and certainly before any rescue work was begun, which was immediately after the fire was discovered. The fire may have originated unobserved from the lamp of one of the men while he was waiting with his head near the roof timber during the time his mate was adjusting the pump. It may have begun from gear friction igniting oil and spreading to the timber on the road. It may have had electrical origin either at the pump itself or from a fall suddenly taking place and damaging the main cable on the main road not far from the pump. The first or the third are the most likely of these alternatives. If the fire was electrical in origin and started at the pump, it points to the necessity for putting such pumps in a pump room (which would fall under the Regulations to be made of non-inflammable material) instead of setting them at the side of a timbered roadway. Where it is not practicable to provide a room, then the roadway itself should be lined and supported with non-inflammable material where electric plant sits. Since there are quite a number of cases where electric pumps and haulages sit in positions similar to those at Blackhill, this lesson should not be lost.