On the 14th, at 3 o’clock P. M., steam was shut off from the shafts and all the works stopped. Five bodies still remained in the mines. Three days later the shafts were opened and some explorations made. Spots of fire were extinguished, where they could be reached. Almost daily they were able to get into some one of the mines and direct streams of water upon some parts of the fire. At this work men were frequently asphyxiated, and then it was necessary to hasten with them to the surface. On the 28th, another body was recovered, and on the 29th, efforts were made to reach the bodies (four) still remaining on the upper levels of the Kentuck; but some of the men fell down insensible from asphyxia, and the attempt was abandoned.
Thus the miners struggled with the fire, until May 2nd, when it grew worse. The drifts between the Yellow-Jacket and the Kentuck and Crown Point mines were then closed, and the shafts of the latter mines were again sealed. The fresh air thrown into the mines by the blowers was supposed to have given the fire new life.
On May 18th, the Kentuck and the Crown Point mines were opened, and miners descended to the lower levels of both. On the 20th May another body was recovered in the south compartment of the Crown Point shaft, when it was found lying on a scaffold at the 1000-foot level, leaving three bodies not yet found. After this the fire again increased and drove the men away from places where they had been able to work. May 24th, it was discovered that the fire was on the 800-foot levels of the Crown Point and Kentuck mines, and the miners finally succeeded in walling it up and confining it to this space.
As late as June 23d, men were occasionally brought to the surface in an insensible condition, and the fire continued to burn in that portion of the mines to which it was confined, for over a year. Nearly three years from the time of the breaking out of the fire the rocks in the 800-foot levels of the Crown Point and Kentuck mines were found to be red-hot. Only fragments of the skeletons of the three missing men were ever found. Their bodies were in those parts of the mines that were walled in and given up to the flames.
CHAPTER XXV.
DEATH IN THE MINE.
On the 20th of September, 1873, about 3 o’clock in the morning, a second fire and series of explosions occurred in the Yellow-Jacket mine, by which six men lost their lives and several were seriously injured.
This fire originated in a winze on the 1300-foot level of the mine. The winze was directly over the forge of an underground blacksmith’s shop, for which it served as a chimney. The fire seems to have been burning in the wood-work of this winze in a smouldering way, generating a quantity of gas, and when an assistant blacksmith approached with a lighted lantern in his hand, a heavy explosion occurred. A great quantity of smoke rushed up the main shaft and hung in a black cloud over the works. When this was seen, an alarm of fire was sounded on the surface, and soon there were over two thousand persons collected about the mine. Among the wives, children, and relations of those in the mines were enacted the same heartrending scenes as on the occasion of the first great fire in April, 1869. When the firemen reached the works, the fatal mistake was made of throwing water down the shaft, thus driving the smoke and gases back upon the men in the lower levels, and causing the loss of life. This was stopped by Captain Taylor, superintendent of the mine, as soon as he arrived on the ground.
About this time a man was sent to the old shaft of the mine, some distance above on the hill, to see that all was right there. Doors were shut down over the mouth of this shaft, and while the man was looking to see that these were properly closed, he took the candle from his lantern and held it over the shaft. As he did so, he saw a streak of fire flash along up a post that stood in the middle of the shaft, between the folding doors. Thinking that a quantity of lint on the corner of the post had taken fire, he struck at it with his hat to blow it out. As he did this, an explosion occurred that shook the whole town. A sheet of flame darted from the mouth of the shaft, and the man, who was still over it, hat in hand, was thrown backwards a distance of several feet.
This second explosion, which caused the solid earth to rock, not only added greatly to the terror of those on the surface, but it sent sheets of flame through all the mines as far as the Belcher, a distance of two thousand feet. Men who were in the Crown Point mine at the moment, stated that this fire seemed a solid mass that filled all the space about them, and that it flashed toward and past them as swiftly as lightning. At the same time the concussion which accompanied the flash was so great as to knock them down and drive them along the ground for a considerable distance. These streams of fire did not penetrate into the cross-drifts, but darted straight southward along the main drifts and galleries, owing to which fact, doubtless, several miners who happened to be in cross-drifts, escaped being killed or seriously injured. To add to the terrors of the situation, all of the lights were blown out by the explosions, and the lower levels of the mines were everywhere in total darkness.