HOW SCIENCE AIDS THE STRICKEN COLLIER
Nothing is more characteristic of the present age than the care which is, quite rightly, expended upon the comfort and safety of those who do the manual labour of the community. The stores of scientific knowledge and skill are drawn upon freely for this end, and some very interesting examples can be given of the truly scientific methods which have been evolved, not only for preventing injuries of any kind, but for succouring those who may, despite those precautions, fall victims to disease or accident.
An example has already been given of the scientific investigation into the nature of colliery explosions and the best means of preventing them. We have seen there how expense has been poured out lavishly in fitting up the experimental gallery or artificial pit, and how the most cunning mechanical and electrical devices have been pressed into the service in order to find out just what happens when an explosion occurs. It has been related how these investigations have revealed with certainty the true cause of the explosions and thereby led the way to their prevention.
But with it all there is still an occasional disaster, occurring, sometimes, at the best and most carefully managed collieries. And therefore it is still necessary to provide for rescuing the unfortunate men who are affected.
It is worth remark, here, that colliery explosions are, all things considered, a very rare occurrence. Because of their dramatic suddenness, and the number of lives which are commonly lost in a single disaster, we are apt to magnify their severity in our minds and to picture the life of the miner as a very hazardous one. In point of fact, the expectation of life, as the insurance people call it, is quite as great among the coal-miners as among any class of manual labour. And of those who do meet an untimely end there are more lost through isolated accidents, involving one or two men, than in the great disasters.
To meet these isolated cases science is almost powerless. For the most part, they are due to falls of material from the roof of the mine, or some simple accident of that kind, caused by an error of judgment or lack of care on the part of fellow-workmen, and the only safeguard against such is the most careful and systematic supervision, which, in Great Britain at all events, is rigidly applied. The underground staff are very carefully organised with this end in view, and the whole is supervised by Government inspectors. No amount of scientific investigation or invention will help much in these matters.
With the explosion or fire, however, it is different, for there subtle forces and strange chemical influences come into play with which science is specially well fitted to deal.
To a great many people the first news of organised, trained and scientifically equipped rescue parties came at the time of the terrible Courrières disaster in France, when over 1000 men lost their lives. For then a party with apparatus hurried from Germany and played a prominent part in the rescue operations. But unfortunately the glamour of their performance was somewhat dimmed by the fact that after they had done all they could, and had gone home again, more men were rescued. Many, reading of that fact, were inclined to scoff at the "new-fangled" ideas, thinking that after all the old way of working with a party of brave but untrained and often ignorant volunteers was better than the new way of working with equipped and trained men. It certainly did seem as if the former had succeeded where the latter had failed. But that was quite a mistake, as subsequent events have shown, and in all probability it was due to the fact that the uninstructed party were local men, thoroughly familiar with the mine in which they were working, its geography and its special local conditions, whereas the trained men came from far away.
At all events the pioneer work of the Germans in the matter of rescue teams has been amply justified by the fact that other people have copied them, and none more thoroughly than the mining authorities of Great Britain. Indeed we see here another instance of the remarkable way in which the British people, though a little slow to take up a new idea, do take it up when it has once been established, and in such a way that they are soon among the foremost in its use. The Germans, all honour to them, started the rescue teams, but at this moment there are rescue teams and stations for their training in Britain second to none in the world. Of these there is a splendid example in the Rhondda Valley, in South Wales, supported and worked by the owners of the pits in that district, besides others at Aberdare, in the same neighbourhood, at Mansfield, to serve the collieries in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; indeed rescue stations are now dotted throughout the mining districts.
The general idea of these stations is as follows. The building is centrally situated in the district which it is intended to serve, and in it are kept an ample supply of the necessary appliances, in the shape of breathing apparatus, which enables men to walk unhurt through poisonous gas, reviving apparatus, by which partially suffocated men can be brought round again by the administration of oxygen, together with quantities of that valuable gas in suitable portable cylinders. Everything which forethought can suggest as even possibly useful in an emergency is kept in a constant state of readiness. And all the while a swift motor car stands ready to carry them to the scene of operations.
But the appliances are of little use without men to work them, who know them and can trust them. The case of David, who felt able to do better work with his sling and stone than in all the panoply of Saul's armour, because he "had not proved it," is typical of a universal human instinct. A man feels safer unarmed, or simply armed, than he does with the most elaborate weapons in which he has not learned to have confidence. And therefore the men who may be called upon to work this apparatus are first taught to have confidence in it. Each station has its instructor, who is usually also the general superintendent of the station, and "galleries" in which the instruction can be carried out.
Volunteers are called for in each colliery and a number of the most suitable men are chosen to undergo training, preference being given, very naturally, to those who are already trained, as fortunately so many workmen are nowadays, in ambulance work.
These chosen men then repair at intervals to the station to undergo a proper course of instruction. The instructor, often an ex-non-commissioned officer in the Royal Engineers, accustomed, therefore, to engineering matters, and also to systematic discipline, there puts them through a course of drill the object of which is to teach them to work together as a squad under the orders of a properly constituted chief. Thus when called upon in some emergency there will be no confusion, but each man will know what to do, and a few short words of command from the chief will serve better than the long explanations which would be necessary with an undisciplined body. It welds the individual men, as it were, into a smoothly working machine, thereby increasing the efficiency of the whole. And arrangements are made whereby, should the leader fail, another man steps into his place of authority at once and without question.
Then, having thus brought them under a suitable discipline, the instructor takes his men into the experimental gallery. This may be described as a long, low, narrow shed, in which are timber props and beams, rails on the floor, heaps of coal, all things, in fact, which may tend to make it closely resemble the actual workings of a coal-mine after they have been shaken and shattered by the force of an explosion.
The great difficulty, in a real disaster, arises from what are known as "falls." The roof of the mine is normally supported by timbers, and these the explosion moves, so that in places many tons of the earth of which the roof of the mine consists will fall and block completely the "roads" or tunnels which communicate from the shaft to the places where the men are at work. These, of course, have to be removed or burrowed through before the men imprisoned in the distant workings can be reached. The rescue party do not, of course, wait to clear away the whole of this debris, only just enough to enable them to crawl through or over it, but even then it often represents the waste of precious hours, and the expenditure of great exertions, to get past a "fall." So at intervals "falls" are made in the gallery, in order that men may be practised in dealing with them.
By permission of W. E. Garforth, Esq., Pontefract
An Artificial Coal Mine
These two photographs show the clouds of flame and smoke issuing from the mouth of the "Artificial Coal Mine" during the experiments described in the text
It may be interesting to give a brief statement of the training undergone by the men at the Mansfield Rescue Station. In that case, it should be stated, the gallery is made double, so that men can go one way and return the other back to their starting-point. Having donned their breathing apparatus, they enter the gallery, which, by the way, is filled with smoke and foul gas. Passing along it, they encounter two falls, which they must get over or through; then they have to set twelve timber props as might be necessary to maintain the safety of a damaged road in the mine; all that they do three times over. Then they are required to bring up and lay 250 bricks, a thing which might also be necessary in an actual emergency, after which they have to fix up "brattice cloth" in a part of the gallery. One of the first duties, of course, for a rescue party is to restore the circulation of air in the mine, and brattice cloth is a rough kind of cloth which is put to guide the air currents. That done, they have to take a dummy representing a man of 14 stone, put it on a stretcher, and carry it round the gallery and over the falls. Finally, they restore the timber, bricks and cloth, and their turn of work is done. The total time required for this is two hours, and during the whole of that period they are, of course, breathing not the natural air, but the artificial atmosphere provided for them by the apparatus with which each man is provided. The chief point of this part of the training, as has been remarked already, is to accustom the men to the wearing of the apparatus and to doing work in it. By this means they gain confidence in it, and get to know that it will not fail them in the time of trial.
The course of instruction consists of ten drills such as has been described, after which the men are called up twice a year, just to refresh their memories.
One side of the gallery is glazed, so that the instructor can watch his men at work without of necessity being inside himself, and there are emergency doors as well, which can be opened to let a man out should the ordeal be too much for him. The necessary "fumes" are generated in a stove and driven into the gallery by a fan. The stations are beautifully fitted up, with baths for the men to wash after their somewhat dirty experience in the gallery, and everything is done for their convenience and welfare.
The advantage of this systematic training of a great number of men is that there are men at each colliery who can be called upon when needed. The team of strangers, as has been remarked, partially failed at Courrières, largely because they were strangers, but when every colliery has a team ready, composed of its own men, then clearly there is the greatest chance of success. The central station of the district is the training-ground where the men go from all the collieries to get the experience and instruction, and where a reserve store of appliances is kept. In many cases, of course, the collieries have their own appliances, so that work can be begun at once, without having to wait for that from the rescue station, but the latter forms a reserve in case of need, and, being kept under the care of an expert, it is naturally always in the best possible working order.
To give an idea of the cost of these stations, it may be stated that the one at Porth, in the Rhondda Valley, cost, including equipment, £7000, while the one at Mansfield cost £3000. This first cost and the expense of maintenance is borne by the collieries of the district in proportion to the quantity of coal which they raise.
And now we can turn to the apparatus itself, without which the organisation already described would be of little value.
There are several makes of these, but a description of the particular apparatus used at the two stations mentioned will serve as an illustration. The purpose, of course, is to give the wearer an atmosphere of his own, which he can carry about with him, and which will render him quite independent of the ordinary atmosphere and quite indifferent to the poisonous nature of the gases around him. To this end his mouth and nostrils must be cut off from the outer world altogether. There are two ways of doing this. In the one there is used a helmet, or perhaps mask would be the better term. This fits right over the man's face, an air-tight joint being made between the helmet and his head by means of a rubber washer which can be inflated with air. The inflation is accomplished by squeezing a rubber ball on the right-hand side of the helmet. In the centre is a glass window through which he can see easily, and since this is apt to become clouded by the dampness of his breath there is a wiper inside, which can be turned by a knob on the outside, so that by simply turning his knob with his hand he can clean the window at any time that may be necessary. Two soft pads inside the helmet bear one on the man's forehead and the other on his chin, and these, working in conjunction with a strap which passes right round the back of his head, keep the thing firmly in position. In addition there is combined with the helmet a leather skull-cap which, being continued down behind, gives good protection to the head and neck.
The other form of apparatus consists of a mouth-piece and nose-clip. The mouth-piece, as its name implies, fits in the man's mouth, being supported and kept in position by a strap passing behind the back of his head. Combined with it is a little screw clip which closes his nostrils. The man also wears a leather skull-cap, from which straps depend to bear the weight of the mouth-piece and its attached tubes, so that the weight does not fall upon his mouth.
Either of these arrangements, it is clear, cuts him off from communication with the outer air, but that is only half the problem, for he must be given a substitute or he will be suffocated.
This part of the appliance he carries, knapsack fashion, upon his back. First there is a rectangular case, called the regenerator, with, below it, two small cylinders of compressed oxygen. A suitable arrangement of pipes connects these together, and to the helmet or mouth-piece as the case may be.
When the man exhales, as we all know, the air which he then discharges from his lungs is deficient in oxygen and instead contains carbonic acid gas. The latter must be got rid of and replaced by pure oxygen. The exhaled air is therefore led down a pipe to the regenerator, where it comes into contact with several trays of caustic soda, a chemical which has a great affinity for carbonic acid. The result is that the latter gas is extracted from the impure air, finding a more congenial home in the caustic soda. It is then necessary to restore the normal quantity of oxygen, and so, as the air passes on, it meets, in a little apparatus known as an injector, a spray of pure oxygen from the cylinders. Thus, after being purified and re-oxygenated, the air passes on through more pipes to the helmet or mouth-piece, to be breathed once more. The apparatus contains sufficient oxygen and caustic soda for this to go on for a space of two hours.
But during times of extra exertion a man needs more air than at others, for which provision has to be made, and so on his chest the rescuer carries a flexible bag divided into two compartments. Through one of these the exhaled air passes on its way to the regenerator, while through the other the oxygenated air flows on its way to the man's mouth. When he is breathing hard, then, during a moment of extra exertion, and when, therefore, he is turning out bad air faster than it can be purified, and drawing in pure air faster than it can be produced, this bag comes to his aid. From the store of oxygenated air in one side of it he draws the extra which he requires, while the other side stores up temporarily the excess of vitiated air, until the regenerator is able to overtake its work. Thus at all times, whether breathing ordinarily or heavily, the apparatus can respond to his demands.
The spray of oxygen as it escapes from the cylinders into the injector has the effect of driving the air along, so that the circulation through the tubes and the regenerator is automatic, and the foul air flows away from the man's mouth and the new air comes back to him quite without effort on his part. As time goes on, of course, and the stored oxygen becomes used up, the pressure in the cylinders falls, which fall, shown upon a little pressure-gauge, tells the man how much longer time he has before he must return for fresh supplies of oxygen and soda. Fresh cylinders of oxygen can be connected up very quickly in place of the empty ones, while a fresh regenerator can be put in, or new caustic soda supplied, in a very short time.
The superintendent of the Mansfield station has invented what is termed a "self-rescue" apparatus, to be used in conjunction with that which has been described above. It is simpler and lighter than the rescue apparatus, and will not keep a man supplied with air for more than an hour or an hour and a quarter. Moreover, it is not automatic, since the flow of oxygen has to be controlled by the man himself. Since, however, it consists only of a mouth-piece, a breathing-bag and a cylinder of oxygen, it is very portable, and may well be carried by a rescue party for the use of any men who may be discovered alive beyond the danger zone. It may well happen, indeed it often has happened, that a remote part of a mine, although cut off from the shaft by passages full of "after-damp," as the foul gases caused by the explosion are termed, may itself contain fairly pure air in which men can live for a long time. If such men be reached, the difficulty is to get them through the passages containing the bad air. Consequently a rescue party which carried one or two of these light forms of apparatus could equip such men with them and then they could pass out with safety.
Another use, the one, in fact, from which the appliance draws its name, is the facility with which, by its aid, a man could set right a chance defect in his ordinary rescue apparatus. Suppose, for example, that a fully equipped man found something wrong, whereby he was prevented from getting his proper supply of purified air. Then, if the party had one of the self-rescue sets with them, he could slip off his helmet or mouth-piece, quickly replacing it, for a time, with the self-rescue mouth-piece. This might enable him to reach safety, or even to put the other apparatus right and then don it once more. The whole thing can be packed up into a small tin case which can be slung over one shoulder, and with the oxygen cylinder slung over the other one the complete outfit can be carried quite easily by a man in addition to what he is wearing himself.
Still another form of breathing appliance may well be taken on these rescue expeditions, and that is the reviving apparatus, for use upon those who have apparently ceased to breathe. In this case a mask is put over the sufferer's mouth and nose, and then the turning of a lever into a certain position causes oxygen to escape from a cylinder in such a way as to cause a suction which empties the man's lungs of the bad gases which have laid him low. That done, another movement of the lever and a deep breath of oxygen flows into his lungs in their place. Thus by alternating the positions of the lever an artificial respiration is set up far more effective than can possibly be attained by the ordinary method of moving the man's arms and pressing his chest. Indeed there are cases, such as when his arms or ribs are injured, when the ordinary method is impossible, but it is hard to imagine an instance when this beneficent apparatus could not be used, and so long as there be any spark of life left in the poor fellow there seems to be every reason to expect a complete revival as the result of its use.
Of course there are many other places where poisonous gases are likely to be met with, such as gas-works, chemical-works, limeworks, and so on, where this apparatus may be kept with advantage, in case of accident.
Indeed all that has been described above has its use apart from colliery explosions, although they are the outstanding opportunities for its employment. Old workings, tunnels which have been empty for a time, sewers—all these have, on occasion, to be entered, not to mention houses full of smoke, or factories full of chemical fumes, all of which form cases in which the rescue apparatus would find useful employment.