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.