Courrières mine disaster

The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst mining accident, caused the death of 1,099 miners in Northern France on 10 March 1906. This disaster was surpassed only by the Benxihu Colliery accident in China on 26 April 1942, which killed 1,549 miners. A coaldust explosion, the cause of which is not known with certainty, devastated a coal mine operated by the Compagnie des mines de houille de Courrières. Victims lived nearby in the villages of Méricourt (404 people killed), Sallaumines (304 killed), Billy-Montigny (114 people killed), and Noyelles-sous-Lens (102 people killed). The mine was 2 km (1 mi) to the east of Lens, in the Pas-de-Calais département (about 220 km, or 140 miles, north of Paris).

A large explosion was heard shortly after 06:30 on the morning of Saturday 10 March 1906. An elevator cage at Shaft 3 was thrown to the surface, damaging pit-head workings; windows and roofs were blown out on the surface at Shaft 4; an elevator cage raised at Shaft 2 contained only dead or unconscious miners.

It is generally agreed that the majority of the deaths and destruction were caused by an explosion of coal dust which swept through the mine. However it has never been ascertained what caused the initial ignition of the coal dust. Two main causes have been hypothesized:

There is evidence favoring both these hypotheses. Blasting was being done in the area believed to be the source of the explosion, after initial attempts to widen a gallery had been abandoned the previous day for lack of success. Many workers in the mine used lamps with naked flames (as opposed to the more expensive Davy lamps), despite the risk of gas explosions. As Monsieur Delafond, General Inspector of Mines, put it in his report:

Rescue attempts began quickly on the morning of the disaster, but were hampered by the lack of trained mine rescuers in France at that time, and by the scale of the disaster: some two-thirds of the miners in the mine at the time of the explosion perished, while many survivors suffered from the effects of gas inhalation. Expert teams from Paris and from Germany arrived at the scene on 12 March. The first funerals occurred on 13 March, during an unseasonal snowstorm; 15,000 people attended. The funerals were a focus for the anger of the mining communities against the companies which owned the concessions, and the first strikes started the next day in the Courrières area, extending quickly to other areas in the départements of the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord.

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