Reports of the Inspectors of Mines of the anthracite coal regions of ...

Ex. Doc.l Eeports of the Inspectors of Mines. 119
a week. This much is necessary to iniderstaud the condition of the mines
at the time of the explosion.
The examination into the immediate cause of the explosion developed
the following facts: The explosion occurred about ten o'clock, A. M., and
was caused b}^ the door at A being blocked open b}^ a trip of loaded cars
which were left standing in it by Michael Duffj^, a runner, whose business it
was to see that the cars passed through the door so that it might be closed.
Instead of doing his duty in this respect, he ordered Edward Anguin, the
little door bo}^, to go and tell the footmen to take the cars away. The boy
did as he was told, and went five or six times to call on the footmen to take
the trip out of the.door so that he might close it. But his calls were un-
heeded, and the door was kept open in this manner for from twenty to
thirty minutes, cutting the air from the heading and giving it the short
and more direct course through the outside chambers to the upcast, as
sliown by the red lines on the map already- referred to. There was another
door at E, which was open also, as is evident from the fact that it was not
destroj-ed by the concussion of .the explosion, when the stoppings between
the airway and heading were blown down even outside of it, as well as the
doors at F F F. The little door boy, Anguin, seemed to be the only person
who did his duty, Init he could do nothing but repeatedly call for some
one to take the cars out of the door; that was something that the little
fellow could not do, nor was it his'business to do it.
There was room for only about nine cars to stand outside of the door,
between it and the foot of the shaft, and it was proven beyond the shadow
of a doubt that this door had been blocked open many times before in the
same manner, though not for so long a time, perhaps.
The explosion occurred in Manx Phillips' chamber, at the point G.
Phillips and Gotlieb Mondt, his laborer, were severel}- burned, but they
were the only ones burned. It is not positively known how the gas was
ignited. Phillips and Mondt deny all knowledge of tiring it, and it is
possible that they did not actually ignite it. In going through the chambers
in that heading I found nails driven into the props close to the roof, and
to my utter surprise, I learned that these nails were used to hang safety
lamps on. They would hang a Davy lamp, lighted, on these nails and
leave them there and go about their work with naked lights hanging in
their boots or on the car bumpers, and they would go away out of the
chamber leaving these lamps hanging there. They did not seem to have
t he remotest idea that a Dav3^ lamp will explode in a couple minutes, and
I suspect that this explosion may have been caused by one of those lamps
exploding.
The above explains the cause of the explosion as well as I can do it with-
out giving the voluminous testimony adduced on the investigation, which
would swell this report to undue proportion.
I only desire to add that the improvements made under my direction
since the explosion have increased the ventilation in the face of the east