1909 Mine Fire
The color guard from Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 will lead a procession in Cherry, Illinois to commemorate a 1909 blaze in a mine The disaster garnered national attention and was so shocking that it pushed state officials to enact a workers’ compensation law for death or injury on the job. The federal government also passed mining regulations.
According to reports, the fire started when the mine’s electricity went out. The mine switched to torches and lanterns. The work was manual, and mules were used to haul coal. A torch fell into a hay cart that was used to feed the mules. Everyone ignored it; it was the type of thing that happened. So they pushed it to the shaft but the shaft was dry.
The fire began to feed on timbers, but an hour passed before anyone realized the situation had grown critical and workers finally began evacuating the mine. The workers turned on a fan, which sucked fumes deeper into the mine. As the fire grew worse, rescue teams used a manually operated lift to pull workers to safety. On the seventh attempt, the operator misread the signals when the people said to pull them up, and he actually lowered them into the flames.
Trapped workers barricaded themselves in the mine and waited for rescue. Twenty men survived underground for a week and eventually crawled to rescuers, but scores of their fellow miners died. Five months later, recovery teams were still pulling bodies from the mine.
From Emilie Le Beau/Chicago Tribune
