The Deepest Mine Disaster In North America

there is a terrifying phenomenon that occurs in the deepest and largest mins on Earth and in 1958 this would occur in the deepest mine in North America and the results would be catastrophic for the miners over 10,000 ft underground this is that horrifying story and as always viewer discretion is advised [Music] Nova Scotia is one of Canada's 13 provinces and territories with a population of just more than 1 million in early 2024 incredibly among the country's provinces and territories it's the second most densely populated as well as the second smallest by area it's also home

to a variety of natural resources and so mining has been a central part of its economy for more than 300 years over that time the province has exported more than 20 different mineral products all over the world but beginning in the 18th century all the way through the better part of the 20th century coal was King in Nova Scotia it's estimated that around 400 million tons of it have been mined from more than 3 coal deposits since 1720 one of the most abundant of these mines in Nova scotia's history is located in Spring Hill which

was a city of around 7,000 in the 1950s digging at these Spring Hill Mines began in the 19th century and eventually became one of the deepest coal mines in North America and also one of the deepest in the world with a depth of 4260 ft or 1300 M and during it Heyday the Spring Hill Mine saw its share of success and a couple of horrific disasters the first one was on February 21st 1891 when an explosion occurred in the number one and number two ciaries which was caused by an accumulation of cold dust that was

blown through both shafts by the ventilation system the dust then ignited and caused one of the worst disasters in Nova scotia's history with 125 miners losing their lives then 65 years later another 39 miners were killed in November of 1956 when another blast occurred with circumstances oddly similar to the first explosion a large quantity of fine cold dust was being carried toward the exit of the Mine by a rail car and on its Journey it passed through a strong gust from the ventilation system this highly flammable dust then spread which was then compounded when the

Train derailed and collided with a power line and when it did the electricity arked and lit the cold dust much like the first this explosion and dment was catastrophic for the community and the mine most of the number four shaft was destroyed which trapped a handful of miners underground for some time until they were rescued then once the survivors were out the tunnels to the still Raging Fire were closed off with bricks to choke off its oxygen supply so it would burn itself out by January of the following year the bricks could finally be removed

and the rest of the bodies Rec covered however the number four shaft would be closed permanently as a result incredibly this could have been much worse if not for changes that had been implemented after the 1891 disaster and new mining technology was credited with allowing 88 miners to escape with their lives part of the credit for that goes to a mining technique change that occurred about 20 years earlier mining coal can be done in a number of ways using a variety of processes and from when the Springhill mine opened in the 1930s the coal deposit

there was Min using something known as the r and pillar technique this is when long horizontal corridors are lined with Timber supports that lead to different rooms where mining occurs this is also done in a sort of grid pattern to help maintain the structural Integrity of the mine one of the disadvantages of this method though is that by leaving natural rock pillars to support the weight of the layer above overall coal uction couldn't reach its full potential because parts of the deposit quite literally supported the mine additionally if the pillars and the tunnels weren't installed

correctly it could cause collapses So eventually Spring Hill switch to something known as long wall mining this is when miners go back and forth across the whole face of a deposit to remove everything as they move forward as the coal is extracted hydraulic supports temporarily hold up the roof and as the miners continue on the roof of the mine sections behind them is allowed to collapse in a controlled way surprisingly although this sounds more dangerous this is is actually considered safer than R and pillar mining in addition the long wall technique would yield around 80%

recovery rate compared to the 60% using R and pillar however even with a safer technique and even with the best preparation sometimes things happen that are entirely out of your control it was mid-afternoon on October 23rd 1958 when 45-year-old Maurice Ruck Levi Miley and 172 other second shift Springhill miners showed up for work as the crew went to their various work areas Maurice's mind was elsewhere earlier that day he brought his wife in their brand new baby home from the hospital which was the couple's 12th child with so many melts to feed morrice couldn't afford

to take much time off so even though he would much rather be at home helping his wife he had to keep mining to provide for his family while he daydreamed the men stepped on two trolley that took them to some of the deepest darkest reaches of the mine as was commonly the case on the long trip inside the crew talked joked and even sang Maurice was once in a quartet and loved the opportunity to sing with the other men he shared the mine with now just as an aside although the depth of the mine was

4200 ft the shafts were dug diagonally and so many of the levels were assigned names based on their length instead of their depth that's why the levels will have names that seem far longer than the total depth of the mine anyway around the 13,000 ft level or nearly 4,000 M into the mine Maurice and Levi hopped off the trolley and began making their way to the gigantic wall they'd be chipping away at when they reached their work site Maurice found himself starving so he opened his lunch box grabbed a s sandwich and scarfed it down

while preparing to move some coal with Levi for the next 6 hours the Pair worked tirelessly blasting coal Off the Wall using compressed air chipper picks and loading onto the conveyor which took it all the way to the mine carts that would carry it to the surface they would do this all the way until their shift end at 11:00 when the night crew would come to relieve them as they worked Maurice's thoughts returned to his family by the time he'd get home the kids and his wife would be fast asleep but that didn't mean he

couldn't spend some time marveling at the family's new addition and he was looking forward to that several hours later at exactly 8:05 p.m. he was slammed back to his senses as the ground started to shake this was a feeling Miners and spring hle resins were all too familiar with the mines were so massive and so deep that The Rock inside was constantly under more and more pressure as coal was removed so was the natural support the rock provided which is why hydraulic supports and pillars were necessary to make up for that difference still the amount

of weight on the layer above was constantly growing and even in the days leading up to that moment the men noticed that the normal soft coal was hardening making it much more difficult to remove they knew that this meant something known as a bump was coming this is a phenomenon that's generally only a problem for the largest of mines a bump is literal seismic activity that's caused by the Mind itself since weight is constantly shifting with the removal of rock and ore stress starts to build and eventually the mind starts to shift this can eventually

cause a sudden violent failure of the supports and earthquakes of varying strength in fact between March and September of that year six Lar bumps had been recorded and even earlier that same day a smaller bump was felt but mostly ignored in that instant though Maurice and levite knew that this wasn't just an average bump when the walls floor and ceilings started to collapse shooting massive rocks in every direction there were then three shock waves that tore through the mud closing exits with piles of heavy Rock debris Maurice had been standing near the top of the

wall when it hit and the sound was so deafening that it made him dizzy then as quickly as it started the bump came to an end as the noise from the shaken was replaced by the screams of men at nearly every level of the mine as Maurice started to regain his wits he found that he was buried up to his waist in Coal then turning his headlamp on he could see nothing but cold dust all around him knowing that if it ignited he would burn to death it wasn't until it all settled that he saw

that the once tall tunnel was now only about 5 ft or 1 and 1/2 M High Maurice then began to check himself over because the situation was so disorienting that he wasn't even sure if he was hurt badly or not initially miraculously other than a few small cuts and bruises he was fine and overall considering the destruction around him he was extremely lucky when many of his colleagues were nods after crawling out of the coal Maurice came across another minor a man named Percy Rector whose arm had been squished between two large Timber supports unfortunately

all the tools and equipment they had before the bump were now buried under the rubble and there was no way to free him otherwise so next moris gathered up every aspirin these seven men around him had on them and fed them to Percy then once Mer's pain was addressed Maurice looked around to size up their situation the seven men were now locked into an area around 50 ft or 15 M long 4 ft or just over a meter wide and just high enough to stand up in all of the exits were completely closed off otherwise

so with nothing to do but wait the miners lay down on the ground uncertain of when or if they could be rescued almost as soon as the bump dissipated Spring Hill citizens started riding at the mine everyone who lived there at least knew someone who worked in the mines but the vast majority of the town was made up of mining families many of them would even joke that if the Springhill mines weren't there the city of 7,000 at the time would have a population of just 500 people as mine officials started to assess the situation

they discovered that the phones to levels below 7800 ft were completely knocked out George Calder the manager of the number two shaft then immediately ordered the train cars off the tracks and for Charlies to begin bringing men out of the mine the rescue effort was going to need a lot of men on foot too but when the ground erupted less than an hour earlier dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide were released and flooded the mine however this didn't matter to George and many of the uninjured miners who ready to get in there and

rescue their fellow crewmen with 20 volunteers George told the rescue coordinator to summon the Drager before the group he was leading began down the slope of the number two shaft the Drager men were named for the company that manufactured their breathing equipment and they were a specialized group of mine Rescuers who were often responsible for clearing noxious gas from the tunnels They Carried 2 hours worth of air each which gave them much more time in dangerous rescue situations that first scw of Rescuers led by George didn't have to go very far before the destruction inside

the mine was clear though floors and ceilings at multiple levels had collapsed creating obstructions for Rescuers trying to get to the F the reaches in fact most of the shift that night was working on levels at 13,000 ft and 13,800 ft when George and his group reached the area where the majority of miners were supposed to be they were greeted with a horrible sight the levels were completely jammed up with debris and and getting Beyond The Rock Falls was going to be a challenge especially with gases at 13,000 ft starting to affect The Rescuers it

took the better part of the next 3 hours for them to create enough of an opening to burrow through and when they made it they found 13 miners trapped on the other side by that time only 36 of 174 miners had made it out at the crumbling Labyrinth below ground and Rescuers could hear the cries and groans of many in other sections they couldn't reach yet as the sun rose over Spring Hill the next morning the count of survivors who made it out reached 81 among them 15 were injured enough to need medical attention and

many of those who had escaped were working on the 13,400 Ft levels and the 13,800 ft levels but a further 93 men were unaccounted for on the 13,000 ft level as the picture of the disaster became more and more clear another terrifying Discovery was made those who weren't working inside galleries or who hadn't been able to take appropriate shelter had been completely crushed between the floors ceilings and walls that gave wager the bump and Rescuers began to find pieces everywhere as they continued the number of those still lost was uncertain but it was clear that

the toll would be considerable and around 5:45 on the morning of October 24th the body of the first Dead minor was removed from the mine and taken to the morg outside the mine the crowd had grown to include nearly all of Spring Hill and they were joined by reporters from media Outlets all over also arriving at Spring Hill that morning was Harold Gordon the coal chief of dosco which owned the company that ran the mine in the 1956 disaster 2 years earlier it was actually Harold who led the rescue effort as soon as he learned

of this new incident he jumped into his car and drove 300 mil to the scene and arrived in the early hours of October 24th then once he was there he wasted very little time and entered the mind with another group of Rescuers to assess the situation 9 hours later he returned with grim news he believed all 93 of the remaining missing men were dead and he told reporters as much through a cracking voice Harold was wrong though the seven men that included Maurice were still alive and waiting for Rescue they could hear what was going

on around them but it seemed like the noise never got much closer then in another area where Levi was working when the bump hit he was putting wooden Sports on the Roof near the top of the 13,000 ft level the force of the jolts threw him off his scaffold and onto the rock for blow but somehow he scrambled into a small rock Cove not much bigger than the one Maurice was trapped in and just like Maurice Levi wasn't alone with him were 11 more miners but one of which was badly hurt the man's leg was

trapped under debris almost certainly broken and any movement of the Rocks around him caused him agonizing pain there was unfortunately nothing anyone could do for him though he'd have to remain there until rescue arrived whenever that would occur for days afterward only bodies were covered by the dejected Rescuers coming out of the mine and for those who were still alive and trapped below the longer they were held captive the more starvation and dehydration became a concern both Maurice and Levi's respective groups pulled all their food and water together and rashed them out the supplies wouldn't

last forever but at least what they had would buy the Rescuers more time to reach them Maurice's group even divied up some chewing tobacco one of the men had and while none of the Trap miners had much they had hope that was kept Alive by the constant sound of Rescuers feverishly working to reach them each of the min's levels also had a series of pipes running through which Maurice's group pounded on in an effort to let the others know they were still alive but even after days of this they never received a response a few

of the survivors even tried to borrow out but only made it about 60 ft or 18 M before they could go no further through at all Maurice and his fellow survivors did what they could to keep Spirits High Monday October 27th was the 29th birthday of one of the men trapped with Maurice so they took a sandwich and divided up among each of them before singing happy birthday but then tragically the next day Percy succumbed to his devastating arm injury for days before he passed he begged the others to remove the arm but no one

had a knife by that point as well they were living in complete darkness all the head lamps had died and not long after they ran out of food and water in an attempt to saave off hunger some of them even tried eating the dried bark off some of the Timber but this proved to be inedible when it quickly came back up and six days after the bump the high hopes of rescue had dwindled both inside and outside the mine that was until it came rushing back on October 29th that day a mining engineer was at

the 13,000 ft level testing the levels of harmful gases when he thought he heard the faint sound of talking there seemed to be no way that anyone could still be alive after all that time but he stopped to listen anyway then holding his breath he didn't move a muscle to see if he could hear it again as the engineer put his ear to the pipe he could hear someone say they were alive and that water was desperately needed on the other end as Levi and the others remained quiet the response they were waiting for finally

came while Rescuers concentrated on removing 60 ft of rock that stood between them and the trap miners they were able to use the pipe to send supplies through to them this immediately lifted the spear to the men inside they may still have been trapped and sitting in complete darkness but their ordeal was coming to an end and they would enjoy their last few hours in the mind with hot soup coffee and cold water finally after nearly 12 hours of continuous work the last bit of rock was removed from a tunnel Rescuers had created and the

men on both sides finally met in celebration and relief news of the rescue then spread around the community quickly and the crowds start to gather again to greet the newly found survivors when they finally exited the mine the discovery and rescue was bitter sweet though there were still 49 men unaccounted for and the digging continued in the early morning hour of November 1st so 9 days after the bump all but destroyed the mine one of The Rescuers heard rhythmic tapping coming from somewhere he then hushed the other men so he could listen to where it

was coming from and once again it was through a pipe that communication between the two sides was established every day of the ordeal the men and Maurice's group hammered on the pipe hoping that someone would hear them but receiving no response just like Levi's group experienced but then suddenly the men inside Heard a Voice through the pipe asking how many were still alive the response from the trapped men was a mixture of tears and celebration and hours later they were finally free on their Journey Back to the surface most of these seven rescue men were

able to walk at least part of the way under their own power but all of them were still weak and severely dehydrated despite the water sent through to them through the pipe when they reached the surface around 9:00 that morning they were greeted with cheers from the gathered crowd before being brought to the hospital all things considered they were in surprisingly good shape although each of them had lost about 10 lb or more the six men who were trapped with Maurice also credited him with keeping Spirits High and preventing the group from giving up hope

when things looked Bleak Maurice would lead the men in prayer or sing A Hymn to take their minds off the predicament even for a moment and they didn't know it at the time but they were the last men to walk out of the mine alive when that was confirmed it was learned that 75 men lost their lives either during the bump or in the days afterward and the process of getting the body Z was painstaking and long due to the advanced state of decomposition from heat that far underground each of the bodies was brought back

to the surface inside airtight aluminum coffins during the ordeal as well reporters spoke with a handful of minors many of whom had been stuck inside for at least several days and their responses to questions about their experiences were vastly different Levi's first words after 6 days Inside the Mind was that he needs to get home to tend to his chickens another Survivor was asked what he wanted most now that he was out of the mind and he replied that he wanted a 7UP soda upon hearing this interview the Pepsi Cola Company hired him as a

spokesman another minor who spoke to the media however said that this was his last shift he was ever going to work in a mine adding that being trapped was the worst experience of his life Maurice on the other hand was unassuming about it all and tried his best to return to life as usual with his 12 children but the story of his courage throughout the ordeal didn't remain secret for long and he was eventually recognized as Canada's citizen of the year the Spring Hill Minds would continue to operate for another 13 years before closing for

good and an inquiry following the 1958 disaster cleared the apparent company of the mind of any wrongdoing if you made it this far thanks for tuning in if you have a story suggestion feel free to submit it to the form found in the description and hopefully I will see you in the next one