22/09/2024
22nd September
The Gresford Disaster occurred on 22 September 1934 at the Gresford Colliery, near Wrexham, when an explosion occured, many miners would have been flung across the pit roads, some of them dying instantly. Others were burnt alive, gassed, asphyxiated or crushed to death.
In total 266 men and boys were killed, with only 6 men surviving. The cause was never proved but an inquiry found that a number of factors such as failures in safety procedures and poor mine management contributed to the disaster. Gresford remains one of Britain's worst coal mining disasters. Only eleven bodies were ever recovered, the remains of the other victims were left underground when the damaged sections of the mine were permanently sealed..
Within a few hours of the first explosion, more than 1000 men had assembled at the pithead, standing silently in the cold and pouring rain, waiting to help their comradeswho wre trapped behind a wall of fire, suddenly the pit cage wheels turned, there was a sense of optimism amoung the large crowd scattered over the pit banks, and all over the colliery yard, but the mood turned to despair as the rescue party appeared with dead colliers. There was a call for 20 volunteers, nobody spoke as a 100 men quietly stepped forward. For two days, brave men fought to reach their entrapped colleagues, but then came the dreaded but innevitable decision to withdraw and seal the pit shaft with the men still trapped inside. The roads and shafts burnt and collapsed, forever entombing the bodies of the victtms.
Picture is of the pithead wheel memorial at Gresford. The Gresford Colliery was closed officially on economic grounds on 10 November 1973.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresford_disaster
www.stelvans.com/voices-from-underground
