The Avondale Colliery Fire
The first state of the United States to enact laws for the purpose of creating safer working environments for miners was Pennsylvania, which did so in 1869. That same year one of the earliest unions for coal miners, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, found its membership increase by thousands. Both events were stimulated by what was up to then the worst mine fire in American history, the Avondale Colliery fire near the town of Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Avondale was a single shaft coal mine near the Susquehanna River, operated by the Nanticoke Coal Company, which was owned by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Rail Road.
The shaft of the colliery was lined with wood and divided by a partition, creating in essence two flues, one of which was used to provide ventilation which was powered by a furnace located 100 feet from the shaft, but connected to it, which allowed the fire in the furnace to cause air to move upwards in the mine shaft. The coal breaker was directly above the shaft, which was also the only way into and out of the mine. Placing the breaker above the shaft eliminated the need to move the coal to another point, and was thus a cost saving feature. The design was a common one in American coal mining operations at the time.
The colliery had only recently settled a work stoppage of over three months, and there remained bad feelings between workers of Welsh descent who had stopped work, and Irish workers who had replaced them. On September 6, 1869, the coal breaker atop the mine caught fire. The entire colliery complex, much of which was built of wood, was quickly ablaze, attracting a crowd who soon were aware that the men in the mine were trapped. But that time most of them were already dead, as the oxygen in the mine was devoured by the fire. The fire spread to the wooden shaft and destroyed it before it was extinguished.
After lowering a dog down the shaft to determine if there was air to breathe, rescuers entered the mine. Finding the shaft obstructed by the remains of damaged timber, they returned to the surface. Two other volunteers entered the mine several hours later, were overcome by afterdamp, and died. A donkey engine was brought to the site to ventilate the mine, and by September 9 all of the bodies of the dead miners, 108 men who were in the mine when the fire broke out, had been recovered. With the two volunteers who had died during the recovery effort, the Avondale fire killed 110 men. One congregation of the little town of Plymouth lost all of its male members.
What caused the fire has never been determined for certainty, with some claiming it had been the furnace, despite its distance from the shaft, others arguing for spontaneous combustion of the coal in the breaker, and others claiming arson. The official inquest found that the furnace ventilation was the cause of the fire. It also found that the deaths of the miners and the two would-be rescuers had been toxic gases they could not escape. What was known for certain was that the miners were doomed by the design of the mine. Pennsylvania passed legislation requiring all underground mines to have at least two separate entrances as a result of the Avondale fire.