Shotfiring.

[Ragger]

A few years after the Lofthouse disaster; my pit discovered there was an area where water had collected in old workings. This had to be drained off. In order to drain it, it was decided to drive a road from a face, that had finished working coal, up towards the area where the water was. I forget what ratio the drift was but it was quite steep. We started off blasting a full solid heading using penobel explosive, which was actually not very strong, and required extra drill holes to in order to achieve even moderate advance. We managed to drift up far enough to install a small stage-loader which loaded onto the old face AFC, which in turn loaded onto the Loader-gate stage loader and then the belt conveyor.
We persevered with the penobel until we advanced far enough to install a short belt conveyor as well. All the time we were complaining about needing a stronger explosive and eventually, due to the poor advance rate, we were given permission to use Polar Ajax.

Holes drilled and primed, shots fired; the blast sounded really good. At last we thought we had turned the corner, all we had to do was clean up and set the rings.
We waited the normal 10 minutes then went to see how things were; whoops, dear me, or perhaps other words that meant all was not well. The Polar Ajax had worked well and there was ground out for two rings.

Only trouble was three rings (which had been set), were blown out, and the conveyor box end was doubled over on top of the belt structure. As a result more advance lost while this was put right.

Mighty good powder that Polar Ajax; not so much needed next time.(lol).
;D ;D

[ejb]

Years ago,2 of us were working for a company that wanted access into an old lead mine in the middle of nowhere,the approach was up a really rough track.
One particular rock kept hitting the sump on the Landrover,so we decided to "remove" it.
"Someone" gave me a couple of sticks of "Dynagex",so we put them on the rock and covered them with sods,lit the fuse and retired.
Big bang,the rock was still there,but all the moss on it had gone !!!
Dynagex didn't have much poke at all.

We scrounged some plaster gel instead,result was no rock anymore.

[John]

Remember going back to the old PLA days Bill?? All face crews were on contracts?
Spare powder was always brought to surface...hmmmmm what world did you come from..LOL
The stable hole men had run out of powder as the face was advancing at a good pace, so a couple of the team went scrounging. They went up the blind side of the belt looking for likely spots where some powder might have been "cribbed". Some time later they returned with smiles on their faces, so everyone knew they'd found enough to finish the job.
The shotfirer gave them the dets, we all know he didn't, but anyway the charged the stable hole up, shotfirer did his bit, checked for gas and wired the charge up...hmmmmm planet venus again These were contract miners!
Sentries were set, and the shotfirer checked and fired the round! BOOOOOOOM Biggest bang I'd ever heard outside of stone heading drivages!
"What the ************" exclaimed the shotfirer!
You blokes haven't been down to the stone headings have you? Nahhhhh, we didn't get that far the chorus said.
Polar Ajax was being used for those headings!

I went back with them to have a good look to see what damage had been done, I've never seen a stable hole so clean!! All the coal had been blown out under the ripping lip for the rippers to clean up ;D

Good stuff that Polar Ajax Bill ;D

[John]

Here's one you reminded me of EJB, when I was at BG's Marlaegis mine at East Leake a mate who was a shotfirer told me this one. Marblaegis is, or was made up of two mines, Marblaegis and Silver Seal. This wasn't always so, Silver Seal was entered from the Bunny drift just down the road from Bunny in Notts, Marblaegis was entered via a drift at BG's East Leake end near the big plaster board works that the mine supplies.
The gypsum reserves at Marblaegis were running out, so BG decided to continue the mine through the older Silver Seal mine reserves, but a new ventilation fan was needed plus the drift requiered a lot of work as it was unsafe.
My mate was gived the daily job of driving around the country lanes to Bunny and do the shotfiring work with another shotfirer. He was given police permits to carry a certain amount of explosives, Triminite, in the boot of his car for the days work.
Day one, they had drilled the shot holes in a very large boulder and charged it much the same as they would underground! Forgetting they had no roof cover, they fired the round and in his own words, it rained rock pellets down on us! Almost instantaneously, police cars were arriving in droves, turned out the main road, many hundreds of yards away was also pelted with rock debris from the firing!.

Same bloke same heading, only now they were under a good roof inside the drift some weeks later, very wet conditions from drippers. He was using a Beethoven 100 shot battery, he'd wired the round to the battery, wound the handle until the neon glowed red and pressed the fire button, one shotfirer thrown backwards head over tits, he'd got himself strung across the battery output via moisture! He said he'd never had such a shock in his life!

[dazb]

Eee by gum that Polar Ajax wer rum stuff, cleared the heading, yer ears, eyes, throat and beat the "nuts" out err yer lungs, cured embolisms, constipation, agnostics and atheists, assisted in the physiological retribution of alcohol induced over indulgence, reassured Christians and elevated the ego of trainee shotfirers seeking dictatorial acclaim or sensual prowess. Good stuff and all courtesy of ICI, perhaps a famous descendent of Alfie.

[Ragger]

Don't know about other pits but at our pit, getting face men to take powder in for the rippers or stable hole men was like drawing back teeth.

On the other hand taking the empty powder bags out was a popular job especially on Afters, and especially on games nights (darts, dominoes, crib), or Friday night (set em up pal we'll have a good night).

The powder bags got you on the early draw, out of the pit.

As long as you were given a note from one of the officilas, shotfirer, deputy or overman, you got paid a full shift. ;D ;D

[ejb]

A farmer in N wales had dammed about 50 yds of a level in a disused mine as a water supply for his sheep.
Trouble was explorers were wading through the water and muddying it,and at lambing time it seems sheep will only drink clear water.
He asked us if we could do anything about it for him,so we had a look u/g and found an old raise near the back of the dam.
The raise was blocked with rubble about 10 ft up,so we thought we'd bring it down and block the level.
We put a couple of sticks on a pole and jammed it in the blockage.
There were no refuges nearby,but we found a small hole in the tunnel roof that went into an old stope,so we thought we'd fire it from there.
My mate climbed in first with the cable and exploder,I tried to climb after him,but due to a session in the pub the previous night,could only manage to get my head and shoulders in.
I told him it would be ok to fire,so he did.
The air blast took my legs from under me,and I ended up on my back in the water on the tunnel floor,screaming and beating my chest.
My mate was having kittens,and had gone white.

The fag I'd been smoking had gone down the front of my shirt and was burning my left nipple.

[dazb]

Yer daft b***er, had me enthralled and nearly put me in intensive care with the punchline, I could just imagine the scene.

[John]

We are getting some funny stories coming out now.

This isn't a shotfiring story, but could well be though!
Pillar extraction at Wongawilli Colliery in NSW. I was on "dogwatch" (nights) in Green panel, yeh I know, stupid name for a face, but that was HQ down in Wollongong that came up with colours for names of faces!
Our first extraction as a team in the "Wongawilli method of pillar extraction", hadn't been done in years and no one had done it before on my shift. The team were, me the electrician, one fitter, one continuous miner driver, two shuttle car drivers, two roof bolter/timber blokes, one spare man and the Deputy.
We relieved the "swing shift" blokes who had extracted two lifts and had progressed well into the third lift, the goaf was still standing!
We finished the lift and the blokes started setting all the "breaker props" and then started No4 lift. About half way into this lift, the roof started working big time, so the Deputy had the miner pulled back to safety and we all retreated back up the heading and waited.
After about half an hour, he ordered the miner back into the lift. The lift was completed and again breaker props were set at the edge of the next lift.
No5 lift started and the goaf still hadn't dropped, not far into the lift, the roof started working again and the miner was pulled back to safety again. We went back in to see what was happening, about forty feet of goaf was hanging on the breaker props that had been set, the props were starting to crack heavily!! The roof started "banging" so we all turned and ran like hell back up the heading! CRASHHHHHHH the goaf dropped behind us and a huge piece of Illawarra sandstone dropped into a swilley full of water and black mud, the Deputy was covered from head to foot in muddy minewater ;D
When we got up to the bootend of the belt, the phone was ringing, seemed the goaf dropping had caused a huge inrush of air around the pit and had opened nearly every air door underground!

[Ragger]

Shotfiring.



It's nearly 100 years since the disaster at the National Colliery, Wattstown in the Rhondda Fach valley.

Tuesday the 11th. July 1905.

Quarter to twelve in the morning there was a massive explosion killing 119 men and boys.

Most died from "afterdamp" poisoning.

Those killed by the force of the explosion suffered terrible injuries and in most cases they could not be identified.

The Inquest jury decided the cause was shotfiring that ignited firedamp.

33 of those killed were under the aged of 15

[John]

A big shame so many had to die Bill, like the book title says it all "The Price of Coal"
Then when you decide something is too unsafe to cut coal, like I've done a couple of times, senior officials get nasty....Glad they couldn't intimidate me though!
I thouroughly peed an Under Manager off one shift when I wouldn't allow them to cut coal. NSW law stated that on a longwall, there must be an automatic methane detector at the T/G end of the face, ie return air side of the face, and an automatic contrivance that shuts the power off to the face electrics when there is one and one quarter percentum of methane in the general body of the air detected by the methane detector.
When I tested the detector, it wasn't working, even the spare detector had failed, so I stopped production for that shift.

[Ragger]

The Price of coal has always been too high, but when kids are dying it's an even higher price.


This photo was taken after the Easington Disaster.

[dazb]

The thoughts of kids having had to work underground in coal mines is bad enough but to consider any of them being killed as a result, is beyond most people's comprehension and yet until "relatively recent times" this seems to have been an almost acceptable element of family survival within coal mining regions of the UK and perhaps non more-so than within the coalfields of my own area of Yorkshire. I have read of a coroner's report on a child four and a half years of age being killed by a fall of coal in a Welsh coal mine and I seem to recollect seeing a report of a father admitting to having taken his child of two years underground with him because he had no alternative, as a widower with his other older children having to work in the mines he had to take charge of the baby and to ensure that sufficient money was earned to provide for all he had no alternative but to take the child with him whilst he worked underground (all not much more than 150 years ago).


HUSKAR COLLIERY.
On the 4th of July 1838 a violent rain storm caused a normally tiny stream to become a “raging torrent” which in turn rushed into the drift entrance to a small coal mine in Nabbs Wood, Silkstone near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. A series of events resulted in 26 children being drowned underground in this deluge, all trapped in a tiny area. The flow of water was so strong they could not battle against it and had to wait until the water finally filled the cavity and in what must have been absolute terror drowned them. These children, both boys and girls aged from 7 to 17 years were laid to rest in Silkstone Churchyard beside a huge monument inscribed on which, this most tragic of any mining disasters is described as being “An awful visitation of the Almighty”. The ensuing “inquest and investigation” in some way laid the foundations for legislation that went a long way to preventing the employment of young children and females underground in coal mines.
It is only in fairly recent times that details of this tragedy have become widely known, a recently published book based on the true facts of this terrible occurrence has been written by Alan Gallop with the apt title; Children of the Dark.
Thoughts of Huskar

How terrible to die, to die in youth
To die in childhood, a bitter truth.
Life’s breath taken by grasping water
Lambs trapped and held, then put to the slaughter.
To die in terror, in true petrifying evil dark
Cruel smothering of life, washing away every tiny spark.
To have to wait in screaming knowing
That death ever nearer was coldly flowing.


Little lives of no value to man or nature
Where was Earth with her motherly nurture?
When these babes of toil faced such torment
Was she the provider of this violent torrent?
Or did man alone create this untimely tomb
These infants barely left their mother’s womb.
Another example of man with nature tied
And still no ones fault that these children died.


Brothers and brother’s sisters, playmate and friend
Stood together in terror awaiting their end.
The swollen stream swept into that mine
Lord, twenty-six tiny souls were then made thine.
Taken from mothers but also from pain
To face underground hardships never again.
Children in heaven should at last know the sun
As miners we pray that this has already been done.