January 20, 2016 • 28 mins
One of the worst mining tragedies in history, the explosion that sent fire through the Courrières mine tunnels claimed more than a thousand lives. It also created awareness of dangerous issues in mines that hadn't received much focus up to that point.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class. From House
to works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I will say, hey, Tracy, it's another depressing episode. I know,
so I've we're recording two episodes today. The other one
(00:23):
is not depressing. But as I was looking through our
listeners submitted suggestions trying to figure out what we were
going to do for today, uh, overwhelmingly they are massacres
and explosions and tragedies and uh a lot of they're
very dour. They have hundreds of extremely sad listeners suggestions. Yeah,
(00:47):
I mean, And that's the thing. This one today is
when we've had numerous requests for it's a mining disaster
that happened in France in nineteen o six. It is
super depressing, but it's also very fascinating. I think that's
part of why we get so many requests for depressing things.
There's a little bit of historical rubenicking perhaps in play.
Like I know, I kind of like the really grizzly
history stuff because I'm removed enough from it. It's far
(01:09):
enough back that I don't have to feel too like
weird and conflicted about reading about it. Like I'm not
getting delight from the current misery of somebody. But I
am fascinated at how it all plays out, on how
all the pieces of the puzzle fit together well, and
and mining disasters have been so reveal within the mining
industry for basically all of history. Yes, it's a very
(01:31):
very dangerous trade. And the explosion that we're talking about
today is at the Courier mine and it was beyond horrific. Uh.
As such a heads up, because we are going to
talk a little bit, we in particular quote a news
report that is pretty graphic. So if that's something that
you have a little bit of trouble with, like you
can't listen to graphic descriptions of of the dead, we
(01:53):
will give you a heads up that that's coming and
you'll have about a minute that you can skip past.
But otherwise, or if you just hate hearing stories about
a lot of people dying, this might not be the
one for you. But if you're fascinated by mining history,
like I actually am, and I think many of our
listeners are, then here we go. At this point, coal
production in France was a much smaller industry than in
(02:16):
the countries of England and Germany. This is a really
expensive undertaking in France just didn't have the kind of
coal that could be used in metallurgy or for producing gas,
which were two of the more lucrative uses. Even though
France was mining coal, the country was consuming more coal
than it was producing. Prior to eighteen fifty, coal production
(02:37):
in France came primarily from the central area of the
country in Lacluzeaux, Saint Etienne and Blasi, among other towns.
But at the mid century things really started to shift
north to LA's Betune and pard Calais, and those areas
it's really started to grow. In eighteen fifty two, those
northern coal fields are producing one million tons of coal.
(03:00):
By eighteen seventy the region was producing four point three
million tons, and from eighteen seventy on and increasingly became
the center of French coal production. One of the main
mining operations in northern France's coal industry was the company
des Mean de Couriere, which was formed in eighteen fifty two,
so it was part of that massive growth, and they
(03:21):
rapidly expanded their interests by opening sixteen coal pits near Les,
becoming the third largest mining operation in all of France.
By nineteen hundred, and this mine was so expansive that
there were actually tunnels into it from several different towns.
It employed more than two thousand miners regularly. And when
we say minor, we both mean minor like a person
(03:42):
that actually works in a mine, and minors like people
that are under age, because some of the the men
that worked there were actually really boys. They were just
teenagers and sometimes quite young teenagers. The Corrier Mining Company
had some impressive statistics about the safety and working conditions,
but it could really growl about I mean, particularly in
comparison to other minds. It was before this disaster doing
(04:05):
pretty well. The company had reduced to the annual death
rates of mining mining workers, It maintained much safer roads
around the facilities, and it won awards for excellence and
it's working arrangements. It was considered in the early nine
hundreds to be one of the safest mines in France.
On the afternoon of March nine, a fire broke out
(04:27):
in the number three pit, which is also called the
Cecile pit, and that's two hundred and seventy meters or
eight hundred and eighty five ft underground, and the initial
source I read said this happened at around three pm,
but I also looked at an older text um from
an engineering and mining periodical at the time, and they
suggested that this fire had actually started several days before that.
(04:50):
So I just want to point out that there's some disparity,
but we know definitely on the ninth that they were
trying to address it because this was an area where
masonry work was being done and workers were not successful
in putting out the fire with any sort of expediency.
So the decision was made, and this is pretty standard
operating procedure, to close all access points to the cecile
(05:10):
pit and sort of walled off. And the idea, of
course was the absence of air, this fire was just
going to naturally extinguish and burn itself out. Was not
at March tenth, so the next day it was basically
business as usual. Workers reported in and at five thirty,
right on schedule, cages descended at pits number two, three, four,
and eleven. The chief engineer in charge of the number
(05:34):
three pit indicated that he had isolated the fire. Just
before seven am, an explosion rocked through the mine. Fire
traveled almost instantly through a hundred and ten kilometers. That's
a little more than sixty eight miles worth of underground tunnels,
so that is an extremely fast moving fireball. Basically from
(05:54):
the surface, it looked like the explosion was the most
intense that the numbers three, four, and eleven pits. Clouds
of dust and smoke shot out from the entrances to
the mine, and then the fire followed. At the number
eleven pit, the explosion caused the cage to the pit
to be flung upwards into the winding gear, making it
a little bit impossible to move it for a bit.
(06:16):
On The cage was basically the elevator that got people
in and at correct. The initial explosion killed several people
on the surface above it. One man working the surface
at the number four pit named George d'avian was thrown
by the blast into an iron staircase. His skull was
fractured and he eventually died from his injuries. One of
(06:36):
the mine offices on the surface also had its roof
blown off in the blast. According to survivors, the scene
underground was, as we mentioned earlier, nothing short of horrifying.
Men were burned alive, some had been dismembered in the explosion,
some were trampled in the ensuing panic, and others were
crushed when roof supports disintegrated. Even the men who were
(06:58):
physically able to make their way through the debris described
having to climb over corpses, really just desperate to avoid
the same fate. I was reading one account where a
survivor had said that they were all trying to rush out,
but some of the men in front of him in
the tunnel, we're dying as they were running out from
(07:18):
what they were inhaling, and so they would fall, and
then people would just have to like not trip over
them and try to make their way over the bodies.
Sirens went off in all of the nearby towns to
alert everyone that there had been an underground explosion. Immediately,
townspeople rushed to the colliery. These were, after all mining towns,
so in many cases families had multiple members working at
(07:40):
courrier and coal mining was their entire livelihood. The panic
above ground as people poured into the area and the
gates to the mind had to be closed to prevent
complete chaos. Eventually, the military got involved in an effort
to reign in the pandemonium, and before we get to
the rescue and clean up efforts. Uh, we're going to
(08:01):
talk first about one of our great sponsors so they
don't get kind of wadded up in all of the
gross talk, because we love our sponsors and don't want
them mixed in with that. So we'll take a little
sponsor break, and then we'll be right back to the story.
So back into the story of the courier of disaster.
The first group of survivors out of pit number eleven
(08:23):
had hurriedly climbed ladders immediately after the blast. They were
really quite near the entrance to the pit to begin with,
and several of them that once they emerged from underground,
were rushed by onlookers who were eager for any information
about what was happening below. But the men were all
in shock and they weren't really able to answer questions
with any sort of detailer clarity. The chief State engineer
(08:46):
for Poticla arrived on the scene in accordance with a
decree that any such incidents needed to immediately fall under
the jurisdiction of state engineers and not local authorities. Cages
were to the surface periodically with survivors, and each time
the gathering crowd fluttered with eager anticipation, hoping that their
(09:07):
loved ones were the ones coming safely to the surface. Uh.
And meanwhile, rescue parties were also organizing, planning to first
extinguish the fires that were still burning in the tunnels,
because those were blocking the way in many cases, and
then to try to retrieve both the living and the
dead from the pits. Occasionally, particularly early on in the
whole process, miners would emerge on their own, sort of
(09:29):
stumbling days from the tunnels, and every time there was
this big surge in the crowd, hoping that it was
someone that was part of their family. In the paper Galois,
a journalists described the horrific site of cages loaded with
bodies coming to the surface. And this is the gruesome part.
We want to include it just to make it clear
how horrifying the scene was. So if it seems like
(09:51):
it would trouble you can skip about a minute starting now.
Quote In the cage, the terribly mutilated bodies are heaped up,
piled on top of one on top of the other,
all completely naked with a slimy coating of sweat. Some
are decapitated. There are trunks without limbs and detached hands.
And feet. There are piles of bleeding flesh. The whole
(10:13):
site is an evil smelling loathsome human morass. When you
touch it, it falls apart in bundles, which are like
pieces of saturated tinder. They are stacked up haphazardly on handbarrows.
Blankets are thrown over, grimacing faces, broken bodies, and crushed limbs.
The access tunnels continued to burn, and that made it
extremely difficult for anybody to even attempts to reach the
(10:36):
trapped miners. As the day of the explosion ended, there
were still more than a thousand men and boys trapped
inside the mine. A temporary mortuary was set up near
the mind to deal with the constant influx of bodies
that were found. The cleanup and identification of the deceased
actually took weeks. As rescue efforts continued, new precautions had
(10:57):
to be taken. There were so many ed people and
horses in these tight tunnels that there was some concern
that their decomposition would make the rescuers sick. Any men
who were willing to go into the tunnel to search
for both the dead and the living had to wear
sterile suits and rubber gloves and carry disinfectants with them,
and the protocol for dealing with the dead shifted as well.
(11:19):
We talked about those horrible cages that were coming up
and the horrible things people were seeing. So eventually they
shifted and the bodies that they were finding were actually
placed in coffins while they were still underground. Uh they
would be treated first with a creasehole solution, and then
these coffins would be sent to the surface where a
medical examiner would open them, inspect them, and identify them
(11:42):
before burial. That way, it was a little less riotous
when cages came up, but there were so many bodies
that eventually they had to start communal graves to bury
these men. So that they could cope with the sheer
volume of work that they had on date to the
decision was made to reverse the underground air current to
(12:03):
try to ventilate the tunnels for the rescue workers. There
was some resistance to this idea though. The fear was
that any survivors and more remote areas of the mind
might be put in jeopardy by the shifting air current,
but the change was made over those objections. Mining teams
from a German colliery arrived to aid in the search,
(12:23):
as well as a fire squad from Paris. At one point,
forty men banded together to form a rescue party, and
they ventured into one of the shafts that was not
at that point fully engulfed in flame. But the shaft
collapsed on them and all of them were killed. And
that's a story that actually repeats many, many times. There
were a lot of people that went in to rescue
and never came back out. This incident became the primary
(12:45):
news story in France. Unsurprisingly, George Clemensou, Minister of the Interior,
as well as other high ranking government officials visited the colliery.
Politicians and royals throughout the world started sending condolence letters,
and there were donation campaigns across the globe as well
to try to raise money for the families of the victims.
(13:06):
The most astounding development in the story, and this is
kind of a headline you'll sometimes see an amazing history
lists or whatever, happened on March thirty, So this is
almost three weeks after the explosion, because you remember it
happened on the tenth, so we're at date twenty at
this point. And on that day, thirteen men arrived alive
at the entrance to pit number two. They had been
(13:27):
in the mind the whole time, and they were brought
to the surface in a cage. They have been wandering
in the dark shafts together for miles looking for a
way out, and they had eventually caught the air current
from an air ventilator. That was after they had shifted
that current and followed it to the source where they
were extracted. These men had survived by drinking whatever stagnant
(13:48):
water they could find in the mine, and they had
supplemented that water with their own urine. They'd also have
been eating horse meat from the animals that had been
killed in the blast, as well as any provisions that
they could find on the dead. They'd also eaten oats
that were kept in the underground horse stables. While they
were weak, they were deemed to be relatively physically stable,
considering that they had been exposed to literally poisonous conditions
(14:12):
throughout this ordeal. Their mental health was are also fairly good.
They were immediately sent for medical treatments so they could
be fed a controlled diet, treated for any medical means,
and slowly reaccustomed to light. Because they had been underground
for all that time. Yeah, you can imagine having little
to no light, basically in pitch black for three weeks
(14:33):
and then walking out into the sun is very shocking. Uh.
And at this point those men had all been presumed
dead so much that there are reports that family members
who came to greet them after being notified of this
amazing event that they had emerged, were actually wearing their
morning clothes when they did so so naturally. The initial
response to this miraculous discovery was joy, but that was
(14:56):
shortly followed by a wave of doubt and anger. People
were concerned that the colliery in the state had mismanaged
the rescue effort. There were accusations that they had likely
left other survivors to die. Additionally, that new hope that
sprang from the thirteen survivors emerging caused a near riot
as people rushed the number to pit hoping that they
(15:19):
were going to be able to find even more miners alive.
Police and military once again had to get involved to
manage the situation. Two of the miraculous thirteen, on Re
Ninny and Charles Provost, were awarded the Legion of Honor
for their courage and their leadership. In later years. Nannie
as a recipient of this award, was criticized because some
(15:39):
of the other men claimed he hadn't really exhibited much
in the way of valor and that he had in
fact been a hindrance to their survival rather than a help. Yeah,
there are lots of stories of him lagging behind, really
kind of having some breakdowns, saying sitting down and saying
that he wanted to just die, while the other who
(16:00):
are trying to keep spirits up and keep everybody moving.
So and again it's all their accounts, So while it's
all first timed accounts, they don't all matchups. That we
don't know the whole story. But in the meantime, the
effort to mount additional searches did continue, and on April fourth,
the last survivor was found in close proximity kind of
between pits number four and number eleven. And this find
(16:23):
was actually almost accidental. The rescued man, a Goose Delton,
had cried out weekly when he thought he saw a
light uh and a member of an active search party,
which it sounds like by the accounts that I read,
was not. They weren't really looking where he was. They
were somewhere else. But he just happened to cry out
and catch their attention, and they followed that cry and
located him. He said he had been attempting to escape
(16:45):
when he lost consciousness, and later considered trying to amputate
one of his limbs so that he would die because
the situation was that hopeless. He had no idea how
long he'd been unconscious or how long he'd been trapped.
It was a complete shock to him that he had
been underground twenty five days. He did not have any
sense of time at this point, and while Belton's rescue
(17:07):
was once again a moment to rejoice, it further fueled
that community anger that had already built that Courier company
and the state engineers who ran the rescue operation had
kind of dropped the ball and maybe left behind people
that were uh validly able to be saved. Security at
the mine office at this point had to be bolstered
because angry crowds were forming daily at the colliery gates.
(17:31):
As a side note, some sources in this mentioned that
the company shut down the rescue after only a few
days and then sealed off the tunnels in an effort
to prevent the fire from spreading. Any further, this would
have trapped anyone who may have still been alive inside
those tunnels. But it's really hard to find substantiation of
that one way or the other. Yeah, even in the
reports that we'll talk about in a moment, uh that
(17:55):
were that were created in the investigations, there is some
wishy washiness about how exactly who exactly gave what orders
and and how exactly they wrapped up the rescue effort.
It did not go on for weeks and weeks though,
and it was kind of a surprise, like when the
thirteen men came out. That really did make people go, oh,
we should still be looking for people. At that point
(18:17):
it had stopped. So but before we talk about the
aftermath of this tragedy and those investigations, we're gonna pause
once again for a word from a sponsor. The final
death toll in this tragedy was more than half of
the mine workers one thousand people. Hundreds of others were injured.
(18:37):
Five separate inquiries and at the cause of the tragedy
and the handling of the post explosion. Rescue efforts were
launched at various points, and while some investigators argued that
the reversal that had been made in the air current
that they did late on the second day was likely
disastrous for other anyone still in the mind because it
basically took away their breathable air. There was a counter
(18:57):
argument made that most of the men had actually died
on the first day, with a much smaller number on
the second, so that shifted current was actually also what
created a trail of sorts for those thirteen men who
emerged eventually to find a way out because the ventilator's
pumping or what they picked up on. And in the end,
that current reversal was deemed entirely justifiable, giving given the circumstances.
(19:19):
The cause of the blast and the reason for its
incredibly far reaching fires was another issue for investigation, particularly
because it had been established that there was no fire
damp in the mind. While the number three cecile pit
appeared to be at the epicenter of the blast, there
really wasn't a definitive answer in the matter of exactly
what caused that blast. Speculation and often involves theories around
(19:42):
gases seeping through cracks in the walls. Uh And in
case you don't know what fire damp is, that is
the those are the gases that are usually associated with
danger in places like Minds, and it can cover a
numerous different kinds of gases. Methane is often a really
prominent one, which I have a question and it I
couldn't find anything in my research. They had stables underground.
(20:03):
Horses make methane with their butts, So there's so I'm
a little confused on that point. But it maybe was
trace amounts enough that we're not considered problematic. But it
was believed eventually, however, that coal dust was really what
enabled that fire to tear through the tunnels at such
an incredible pace. According to a statement issued by the
(20:25):
Counsel of Minds, quote as regards the danger of dust,
neither the experiments that have been made, nor the lessons
learned in practical working, could have given rise to any
suspicion of the possibility of an inflammation of dust on
a scale of such magnitude in a mine in which
there was no fire damp. Explosions of dust alone in
the absence of fire damp that have been hitherto recorded
(20:47):
in France, having never extended beyond distances of fifty to
eighty meters. Up to this point, firedamp had been the
thing that mine's worried about in terms of safety, and
since there was none in Klorea, there were standard practices
that were really really unsafe, such as leaving lightbulbs uncovered. Yeah,
they're like, there's nothing in the air that's going to ignite.
(21:08):
We don't have to worry about, you know, safety covers
for these lights. But they weren't taking the cold dust
into account. There was also some interesting stuff that happened
as a consequence of this. Uh One that's a political
angle is that a year before the Courier disaster, Kaiser
Wilhelm the second had announced that Germany supported the Moroccan
sultan who was challenging French authority in that country. So
(21:31):
that caused some friction between Germany and France. And on
a positive note, coming out of all of this, those
German uh miners that came to assist in the rescue effort,
that showed up to assist and search the minds really
led to a little bit of a softening of tensions
between Germany and France. There was a lot made of like,
we may have problems, but we're all brethren at the end.
(21:53):
Another effect was that the disaster galvanized growing unrest among
mine workers. Already, that coal industry had seen a multi
year trend of miners wages dropping while company profits were rising,
and because of this disaster of miners strikes started. It
was one of several in France at the time. To
run it by the numbers. In nineteen six, France had
(22:15):
a total of one thousand, three hundred and nine labor
strikes involving four hundred and thirty eight thousand, four hundred
sixty six strikers. Was totaled more than nine million days
worth of work that was lost. When it's calculated in
man hours, it's estimated that twenty percent of those men
and thirty five percent of the days of work lost
(22:36):
were related to coal industry strikes. Yeah, they were going
through the growth the growing pains of any industrializing nation,
where there were lots of industries that were having strikes,
but really the the bulk of it was the coal
mining industry, and that resentment actually carried on for years,
even as various strikes sprang to life and then died
or were negotiated away. Many of the men who survived
(22:59):
the Courier disaster went back to working in the minds
because other jobs just wouldn't pay the same wage. There
were stories of some that I read that tried like
working in the admin side of the mining industry as clerks,
but they just weren't making enough to support their families
that way. And additionally, kind of keeping this long tide
(23:21):
of just unrest and sort of anger at the mining
company h The Courier Company didn't exactly go out of
their way to take care of the survivors of this incident.
Some men who had been trapped during the disaster and
eventually made their way out were paid for the shifts
that they would have been scheduled during that time, but
no more. Others were paid small sums with no further
(23:41):
effort to ensure their livelihoods or their safety. Became a
public relations nightmare for the coal company and in some
ways for the coal industry itself. The year after this incident,
M J. Tafano began experimenting with coal dust to more
precisely define its characteristics and it's explosive tendency ease. Since
this was something no one had really looked at before,
(24:03):
Suddenly it became very important to figure out how this
needed to be handled, and his work and writings on
the subject are considered the foundation of all cold dust research,
and his influence in the field actually continues to present day.
On the one year anniversary of the tragedy, there were
numerous remembrances in northern France. Why you might think an
(24:24):
event from a century before would be long forgotten, it
was still really very much in the minds of the
citizens of towns who lost people that day. Modern miners
placed flowers on the ground where tunnel openings had once been,
and in some cases these are actually families who lost
relatives in these explosions. In the fire and the town
(24:44):
of Nottel, Soulands, each the four hundred and four citizens
of that town who were killed were represented by a
badge worn by a townsperson. Four hundred and four white
balloons were also released in memory of the deceased. Even
a century after the Courier explosions, there is still anger
over this event and how it was handled. There is
(25:04):
lingering sentiment that the valuation of profit over life is
a continuing problem in industrial nation. Since the Clorier disaster,
there's only been one mining explosion in the world that
claimed more lives. That happened in China and one thousand
five nine people were killed. Yeah, so while there is
(25:27):
one that is considered larger, career is often pointed to
as like the horrible mining disaster, and part of that
is how it was handled in the aftermath. So it's
terribly sad. And I really was very touched and quite
moved reading about the accounts of the hundred year anniversary
and how people handled it. I read a translated quote.
(25:47):
I didn't use it because I wasn't sure of the
how good the translation was from the original, but by
a miner that was basically saying, like, I know my
job is dangerous, and marking this anniversary, you know, is
important to me because it it reminds me that I
always have to be careful, Like I always have to
look after my co workers and my you know, the
guys that work under me down there, Like this is
(26:08):
a serious business that we do and we have to
be mindful all the time. It was like, oh, man,
do you have some listener mail? I do I have
listener mail? That made me squeal with delight when I
read it. It is the cutest story and it's also
a beautiful postcard um from Prague, and it is from
our listener, Amy, and she says, Tracy and Holley, my
hubby and I are on the European honeymoon of our dreams.
(26:31):
First of all, congratulations mosl on your nuptials. Uh. There
they went from Budapest to Vienna along the Danube, and
then Prague and Berlin, she said, from Gallipoli to Suleiman
the Magnificent to liz Domania. Being a regular stuff you
missed in history class, listener has made this trip so
much more enjoyable. I know things about history because of you.
As proof of your world domination, our check guide at
(26:54):
the Prague Castle cited your episode on suppontification when we
visited the soap Lady of Prague que. Oh my gosh, Amy,
that's the best story of all time. Love that story.
I loved it so much. Uh. And then she makes
a suggestion that I might use in the near future,
so hopefully, and she said us this beautiful postcard. Uh,
(27:16):
and I just love it and thank you so much.
I really really appreciate you telling us that, because that
was super fun. If you would like to write to us,
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(27:38):
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that's really we should do a quick summation that wig instant.
If you would like to research a little bit more
about what we've talked about today, you can go to
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or mind and you will turn up a few articles,
including what happens to abandon the minds and how underground
(28:01):
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(28:21):
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how staff works dot com
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class. From House
to works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I will say, hey, Tracy, it's another depressing episode. I know,
so I've we're recording two episodes today. The other one
(00:23):
is not depressing. But as I was looking through our
listeners submitted suggestions trying to figure out what we were
going to do for today, uh, overwhelmingly they are massacres
and explosions and tragedies and uh a lot of they're
very dour. They have hundreds of extremely sad listeners suggestions. Yeah,
(00:47):
I mean, And that's the thing. This one today is
when we've had numerous requests for it's a mining disaster
that happened in France in nineteen o six. It is
super depressing, but it's also very fascinating. I think that's
part of why we get so many requests for depressing things.
There's a little bit of historical rubenicking perhaps in play.
Like I know, I kind of like the really grizzly
history stuff because I'm removed enough from it. It's far
(01:09):
enough back that I don't have to feel too like
weird and conflicted about reading about it. Like I'm not
getting delight from the current misery of somebody. But I
am fascinated at how it all plays out, on how
all the pieces of the puzzle fit together well, and
and mining disasters have been so reveal within the mining
industry for basically all of history. Yes, it's a very
(01:31):
very dangerous trade. And the explosion that we're talking about
today is at the Courier mine and it was beyond horrific. Uh.
As such a heads up, because we are going to
talk a little bit, we in particular quote a news
report that is pretty graphic. So if that's something that
you have a little bit of trouble with, like you
can't listen to graphic descriptions of of the dead, we
(01:53):
will give you a heads up that that's coming and
you'll have about a minute that you can skip past.
But otherwise, or if you just hate hearing stories about
a lot of people dying, this might not be the
one for you. But if you're fascinated by mining history,
like I actually am, and I think many of our
listeners are, then here we go. At this point, coal
production in France was a much smaller industry than in
(02:16):
the countries of England and Germany. This is a really
expensive undertaking in France just didn't have the kind of
coal that could be used in metallurgy or for producing gas,
which were two of the more lucrative uses. Even though
France was mining coal, the country was consuming more coal
than it was producing. Prior to eighteen fifty, coal production
(02:37):
in France came primarily from the central area of the
country in Lacluzeaux, Saint Etienne and Blasi, among other towns.
But at the mid century things really started to shift
north to LA's Betune and pard Calais, and those areas
it's really started to grow. In eighteen fifty two, those
northern coal fields are producing one million tons of coal.
(03:00):
By eighteen seventy the region was producing four point three
million tons, and from eighteen seventy on and increasingly became
the center of French coal production. One of the main
mining operations in northern France's coal industry was the company
des Mean de Couriere, which was formed in eighteen fifty two,
so it was part of that massive growth, and they
(03:21):
rapidly expanded their interests by opening sixteen coal pits near Les,
becoming the third largest mining operation in all of France.
By nineteen hundred, and this mine was so expansive that
there were actually tunnels into it from several different towns.
It employed more than two thousand miners regularly. And when
we say minor, we both mean minor like a person
(03:42):
that actually works in a mine, and minors like people
that are under age, because some of the the men
that worked there were actually really boys. They were just
teenagers and sometimes quite young teenagers. The Corrier Mining Company
had some impressive statistics about the safety and working conditions,
but it could really growl about I mean, particularly in
comparison to other minds. It was before this disaster doing
(04:05):
pretty well. The company had reduced to the annual death
rates of mining mining workers, It maintained much safer roads
around the facilities, and it won awards for excellence and
it's working arrangements. It was considered in the early nine
hundreds to be one of the safest mines in France.
On the afternoon of March nine, a fire broke out
(04:27):
in the number three pit, which is also called the
Cecile pit, and that's two hundred and seventy meters or
eight hundred and eighty five ft underground, and the initial
source I read said this happened at around three pm,
but I also looked at an older text um from
an engineering and mining periodical at the time, and they
suggested that this fire had actually started several days before that.
(04:50):
So I just want to point out that there's some disparity,
but we know definitely on the ninth that they were
trying to address it because this was an area where
masonry work was being done and workers were not successful
in putting out the fire with any sort of expediency.
So the decision was made, and this is pretty standard
operating procedure, to close all access points to the cecile
(05:10):
pit and sort of walled off. And the idea, of
course was the absence of air, this fire was just
going to naturally extinguish and burn itself out. Was not
at March tenth, so the next day it was basically
business as usual. Workers reported in and at five thirty,
right on schedule, cages descended at pits number two, three, four,
and eleven. The chief engineer in charge of the number
(05:34):
three pit indicated that he had isolated the fire. Just
before seven am, an explosion rocked through the mine. Fire
traveled almost instantly through a hundred and ten kilometers. That's
a little more than sixty eight miles worth of underground tunnels,
so that is an extremely fast moving fireball. Basically from
(05:54):
the surface, it looked like the explosion was the most
intense that the numbers three, four, and eleven pits. Clouds
of dust and smoke shot out from the entrances to
the mine, and then the fire followed. At the number
eleven pit, the explosion caused the cage to the pit
to be flung upwards into the winding gear, making it
a little bit impossible to move it for a bit.
(06:16):
On The cage was basically the elevator that got people
in and at correct. The initial explosion killed several people
on the surface above it. One man working the surface
at the number four pit named George d'avian was thrown
by the blast into an iron staircase. His skull was
fractured and he eventually died from his injuries. One of
(06:36):
the mine offices on the surface also had its roof
blown off in the blast. According to survivors, the scene
underground was, as we mentioned earlier, nothing short of horrifying.
Men were burned alive, some had been dismembered in the explosion,
some were trampled in the ensuing panic, and others were
crushed when roof supports disintegrated. Even the men who were
(06:58):
physically able to make their way through the debris described
having to climb over corpses, really just desperate to avoid
the same fate. I was reading one account where a
survivor had said that they were all trying to rush out,
but some of the men in front of him in
the tunnel, we're dying as they were running out from
(07:18):
what they were inhaling, and so they would fall, and
then people would just have to like not trip over
them and try to make their way over the bodies.
Sirens went off in all of the nearby towns to
alert everyone that there had been an underground explosion. Immediately,
townspeople rushed to the colliery. These were, after all mining towns,
so in many cases families had multiple members working at
(07:40):
courrier and coal mining was their entire livelihood. The panic
above ground as people poured into the area and the
gates to the mind had to be closed to prevent
complete chaos. Eventually, the military got involved in an effort
to reign in the pandemonium, and before we get to
the rescue and clean up efforts. Uh, we're going to
(08:01):
talk first about one of our great sponsors so they
don't get kind of wadded up in all of the
gross talk, because we love our sponsors and don't want
them mixed in with that. So we'll take a little
sponsor break, and then we'll be right back to the story.
So back into the story of the courier of disaster.
The first group of survivors out of pit number eleven
(08:23):
had hurriedly climbed ladders immediately after the blast. They were
really quite near the entrance to the pit to begin with,
and several of them that once they emerged from underground,
were rushed by onlookers who were eager for any information
about what was happening below. But the men were all
in shock and they weren't really able to answer questions
with any sort of detailer clarity. The chief State engineer
(08:46):
for Poticla arrived on the scene in accordance with a
decree that any such incidents needed to immediately fall under
the jurisdiction of state engineers and not local authorities. Cages
were to the surface periodically with survivors, and each time
the gathering crowd fluttered with eager anticipation, hoping that their
(09:07):
loved ones were the ones coming safely to the surface. Uh.
And meanwhile, rescue parties were also organizing, planning to first
extinguish the fires that were still burning in the tunnels,
because those were blocking the way in many cases, and
then to try to retrieve both the living and the
dead from the pits. Occasionally, particularly early on in the
whole process, miners would emerge on their own, sort of
(09:29):
stumbling days from the tunnels, and every time there was
this big surge in the crowd, hoping that it was
someone that was part of their family. In the paper Galois,
a journalists described the horrific site of cages loaded with
bodies coming to the surface. And this is the gruesome part.
We want to include it just to make it clear
how horrifying the scene was. So if it seems like
(09:51):
it would trouble you can skip about a minute starting now.
Quote In the cage, the terribly mutilated bodies are heaped up,
piled on top of one on top of the other,
all completely naked with a slimy coating of sweat. Some
are decapitated. There are trunks without limbs and detached hands.
And feet. There are piles of bleeding flesh. The whole
(10:13):
site is an evil smelling loathsome human morass. When you
touch it, it falls apart in bundles, which are like
pieces of saturated tinder. They are stacked up haphazardly on handbarrows.
Blankets are thrown over, grimacing faces, broken bodies, and crushed limbs.
The access tunnels continued to burn, and that made it
extremely difficult for anybody to even attempts to reach the
(10:36):
trapped miners. As the day of the explosion ended, there
were still more than a thousand men and boys trapped
inside the mine. A temporary mortuary was set up near
the mind to deal with the constant influx of bodies
that were found. The cleanup and identification of the deceased
actually took weeks. As rescue efforts continued, new precautions had
(10:57):
to be taken. There were so many ed people and
horses in these tight tunnels that there was some concern
that their decomposition would make the rescuers sick. Any men
who were willing to go into the tunnel to search
for both the dead and the living had to wear
sterile suits and rubber gloves and carry disinfectants with them,
and the protocol for dealing with the dead shifted as well.
(11:19):
We talked about those horrible cages that were coming up
and the horrible things people were seeing. So eventually they
shifted and the bodies that they were finding were actually
placed in coffins while they were still underground. Uh they
would be treated first with a creasehole solution, and then
these coffins would be sent to the surface where a
medical examiner would open them, inspect them, and identify them
(11:42):
before burial. That way, it was a little less riotous
when cages came up, but there were so many bodies
that eventually they had to start communal graves to bury
these men. So that they could cope with the sheer
volume of work that they had on date to the
decision was made to reverse the underground air current to
(12:03):
try to ventilate the tunnels for the rescue workers. There
was some resistance to this idea though. The fear was
that any survivors and more remote areas of the mind
might be put in jeopardy by the shifting air current,
but the change was made over those objections. Mining teams
from a German colliery arrived to aid in the search,
(12:23):
as well as a fire squad from Paris. At one point,
forty men banded together to form a rescue party, and
they ventured into one of the shafts that was not
at that point fully engulfed in flame. But the shaft
collapsed on them and all of them were killed. And
that's a story that actually repeats many, many times. There
were a lot of people that went in to rescue
and never came back out. This incident became the primary
(12:45):
news story in France. Unsurprisingly, George Clemensou, Minister of the Interior,
as well as other high ranking government officials visited the colliery.
Politicians and royals throughout the world started sending condolence letters,
and there were donation campaigns across the globe as well
to try to raise money for the families of the victims.
(13:06):
The most astounding development in the story, and this is
kind of a headline you'll sometimes see an amazing history
lists or whatever, happened on March thirty, So this is
almost three weeks after the explosion, because you remember it
happened on the tenth, so we're at date twenty at
this point. And on that day, thirteen men arrived alive
at the entrance to pit number two. They had been
(13:27):
in the mind the whole time, and they were brought
to the surface in a cage. They have been wandering
in the dark shafts together for miles looking for a
way out, and they had eventually caught the air current
from an air ventilator. That was after they had shifted
that current and followed it to the source where they
were extracted. These men had survived by drinking whatever stagnant
(13:48):
water they could find in the mine, and they had
supplemented that water with their own urine. They'd also have
been eating horse meat from the animals that had been
killed in the blast, as well as any provisions that
they could find on the dead. They'd also eaten oats
that were kept in the underground horse stables. While they
were weak, they were deemed to be relatively physically stable,
considering that they had been exposed to literally poisonous conditions
(14:12):
throughout this ordeal. Their mental health was are also fairly good.
They were immediately sent for medical treatments so they could
be fed a controlled diet, treated for any medical means,
and slowly reaccustomed to light. Because they had been underground
for all that time. Yeah, you can imagine having little
to no light, basically in pitch black for three weeks
(14:33):
and then walking out into the sun is very shocking. Uh.
And at this point those men had all been presumed
dead so much that there are reports that family members
who came to greet them after being notified of this
amazing event that they had emerged, were actually wearing their
morning clothes when they did so so naturally. The initial
response to this miraculous discovery was joy, but that was
(14:56):
shortly followed by a wave of doubt and anger. People
were concerned that the colliery in the state had mismanaged
the rescue effort. There were accusations that they had likely
left other survivors to die. Additionally, that new hope that
sprang from the thirteen survivors emerging caused a near riot
as people rushed the number to pit hoping that they
(15:19):
were going to be able to find even more miners alive.
Police and military once again had to get involved to
manage the situation. Two of the miraculous thirteen, on Re
Ninny and Charles Provost, were awarded the Legion of Honor
for their courage and their leadership. In later years. Nannie
as a recipient of this award, was criticized because some
(15:39):
of the other men claimed he hadn't really exhibited much
in the way of valor and that he had in
fact been a hindrance to their survival rather than a help. Yeah,
there are lots of stories of him lagging behind, really
kind of having some breakdowns, saying sitting down and saying
that he wanted to just die, while the other who
(16:00):
are trying to keep spirits up and keep everybody moving.
So and again it's all their accounts, So while it's
all first timed accounts, they don't all matchups. That we
don't know the whole story. But in the meantime, the
effort to mount additional searches did continue, and on April fourth,
the last survivor was found in close proximity kind of
between pits number four and number eleven. And this find
(16:23):
was actually almost accidental. The rescued man, a Goose Delton,
had cried out weekly when he thought he saw a
light uh and a member of an active search party,
which it sounds like by the accounts that I read,
was not. They weren't really looking where he was. They
were somewhere else. But he just happened to cry out
and catch their attention, and they followed that cry and
located him. He said he had been attempting to escape
(16:45):
when he lost consciousness, and later considered trying to amputate
one of his limbs so that he would die because
the situation was that hopeless. He had no idea how
long he'd been unconscious or how long he'd been trapped.
It was a complete shock to him that he had
been underground twenty five days. He did not have any
sense of time at this point, and while Belton's rescue
(17:07):
was once again a moment to rejoice, it further fueled
that community anger that had already built that Courier company
and the state engineers who ran the rescue operation had
kind of dropped the ball and maybe left behind people
that were uh validly able to be saved. Security at
the mine office at this point had to be bolstered
because angry crowds were forming daily at the colliery gates.
(17:31):
As a side note, some sources in this mentioned that
the company shut down the rescue after only a few
days and then sealed off the tunnels in an effort
to prevent the fire from spreading. Any further, this would
have trapped anyone who may have still been alive inside
those tunnels. But it's really hard to find substantiation of
that one way or the other. Yeah, even in the
reports that we'll talk about in a moment, uh that
(17:55):
were that were created in the investigations, there is some
wishy washiness about how exactly who exactly gave what orders
and and how exactly they wrapped up the rescue effort.
It did not go on for weeks and weeks though,
and it was kind of a surprise, like when the
thirteen men came out. That really did make people go, oh,
we should still be looking for people. At that point
(18:17):
it had stopped. So but before we talk about the
aftermath of this tragedy and those investigations, we're gonna pause
once again for a word from a sponsor. The final
death toll in this tragedy was more than half of
the mine workers one thousand people. Hundreds of others were injured.
(18:37):
Five separate inquiries and at the cause of the tragedy
and the handling of the post explosion. Rescue efforts were
launched at various points, and while some investigators argued that
the reversal that had been made in the air current
that they did late on the second day was likely
disastrous for other anyone still in the mind because it
basically took away their breathable air. There was a counter
(18:57):
argument made that most of the men had actually died
on the first day, with a much smaller number on
the second, so that shifted current was actually also what
created a trail of sorts for those thirteen men who
emerged eventually to find a way out because the ventilator's
pumping or what they picked up on. And in the end,
that current reversal was deemed entirely justifiable, giving given the circumstances.
(19:19):
The cause of the blast and the reason for its
incredibly far reaching fires was another issue for investigation, particularly
because it had been established that there was no fire
damp in the mind. While the number three cecile pit
appeared to be at the epicenter of the blast, there
really wasn't a definitive answer in the matter of exactly
what caused that blast. Speculation and often involves theories around
(19:42):
gases seeping through cracks in the walls. Uh And in
case you don't know what fire damp is, that is
the those are the gases that are usually associated with
danger in places like Minds, and it can cover a
numerous different kinds of gases. Methane is often a really
prominent one, which I have a question and it I
couldn't find anything in my research. They had stables underground.
(20:03):
Horses make methane with their butts, So there's so I'm
a little confused on that point. But it maybe was
trace amounts enough that we're not considered problematic. But it
was believed eventually, however, that coal dust was really what
enabled that fire to tear through the tunnels at such
an incredible pace. According to a statement issued by the
(20:25):
Counsel of Minds, quote as regards the danger of dust,
neither the experiments that have been made, nor the lessons
learned in practical working, could have given rise to any
suspicion of the possibility of an inflammation of dust on
a scale of such magnitude in a mine in which
there was no fire damp. Explosions of dust alone in
the absence of fire damp that have been hitherto recorded
(20:47):
in France, having never extended beyond distances of fifty to
eighty meters. Up to this point, firedamp had been the
thing that mine's worried about in terms of safety, and
since there was none in Klorea, there were standard practices
that were really really unsafe, such as leaving lightbulbs uncovered. Yeah,
they're like, there's nothing in the air that's going to ignite.
(21:08):
We don't have to worry about, you know, safety covers
for these lights. But they weren't taking the cold dust
into account. There was also some interesting stuff that happened
as a consequence of this. Uh One that's a political
angle is that a year before the Courier disaster, Kaiser
Wilhelm the second had announced that Germany supported the Moroccan
sultan who was challenging French authority in that country. So
(21:31):
that caused some friction between Germany and France. And on
a positive note, coming out of all of this, those
German uh miners that came to assist in the rescue effort,
that showed up to assist and search the minds really
led to a little bit of a softening of tensions
between Germany and France. There was a lot made of like,
we may have problems, but we're all brethren at the end.
(21:53):
Another effect was that the disaster galvanized growing unrest among
mine workers. Already, that coal industry had seen a multi
year trend of miners wages dropping while company profits were rising,
and because of this disaster of miners strikes started. It
was one of several in France at the time. To
run it by the numbers. In nineteen six, France had
(22:15):
a total of one thousand, three hundred and nine labor
strikes involving four hundred and thirty eight thousand, four hundred
sixty six strikers. Was totaled more than nine million days
worth of work that was lost. When it's calculated in
man hours, it's estimated that twenty percent of those men
and thirty five percent of the days of work lost
(22:36):
were related to coal industry strikes. Yeah, they were going
through the growth the growing pains of any industrializing nation,
where there were lots of industries that were having strikes,
but really the the bulk of it was the coal
mining industry, and that resentment actually carried on for years,
even as various strikes sprang to life and then died
or were negotiated away. Many of the men who survived
(22:59):
the Courier disaster went back to working in the minds
because other jobs just wouldn't pay the same wage. There
were stories of some that I read that tried like
working in the admin side of the mining industry as clerks,
but they just weren't making enough to support their families
that way. And additionally, kind of keeping this long tide
(23:21):
of just unrest and sort of anger at the mining
company h The Courier Company didn't exactly go out of
their way to take care of the survivors of this incident.
Some men who had been trapped during the disaster and
eventually made their way out were paid for the shifts
that they would have been scheduled during that time, but
no more. Others were paid small sums with no further
(23:41):
effort to ensure their livelihoods or their safety. Became a
public relations nightmare for the coal company and in some
ways for the coal industry itself. The year after this incident,
M J. Tafano began experimenting with coal dust to more
precisely define its characteristics and it's explosive tendency ease. Since
this was something no one had really looked at before,
(24:03):
Suddenly it became very important to figure out how this
needed to be handled, and his work and writings on
the subject are considered the foundation of all cold dust research,
and his influence in the field actually continues to present day.
On the one year anniversary of the tragedy, there were
numerous remembrances in northern France. Why you might think an
(24:24):
event from a century before would be long forgotten, it
was still really very much in the minds of the
citizens of towns who lost people that day. Modern miners
placed flowers on the ground where tunnel openings had once been,
and in some cases these are actually families who lost
relatives in these explosions. In the fire and the town
(24:44):
of Nottel, Soulands, each the four hundred and four citizens
of that town who were killed were represented by a
badge worn by a townsperson. Four hundred and four white
balloons were also released in memory of the deceased. Even
a century after the Courier explosions, there is still anger
over this event and how it was handled. There is
(25:04):
lingering sentiment that the valuation of profit over life is
a continuing problem in industrial nation. Since the Clorier disaster,
there's only been one mining explosion in the world that
claimed more lives. That happened in China and one thousand
five nine people were killed. Yeah, so while there is
(25:27):
one that is considered larger, career is often pointed to
as like the horrible mining disaster, and part of that
is how it was handled in the aftermath. So it's
terribly sad. And I really was very touched and quite
moved reading about the accounts of the hundred year anniversary
and how people handled it. I read a translated quote.
(25:47):
I didn't use it because I wasn't sure of the
how good the translation was from the original, but by
a miner that was basically saying, like, I know my
job is dangerous, and marking this anniversary, you know, is
important to me because it it reminds me that I
always have to be careful, Like I always have to
look after my co workers and my you know, the
guys that work under me down there, Like this is
(26:08):
a serious business that we do and we have to
be mindful all the time. It was like, oh, man,
do you have some listener mail? I do I have
listener mail? That made me squeal with delight when I
read it. It is the cutest story and it's also
a beautiful postcard um from Prague, and it is from
our listener, Amy, and she says, Tracy and Holley, my
hubby and I are on the European honeymoon of our dreams.
(26:31):
First of all, congratulations mosl on your nuptials. Uh. There
they went from Budapest to Vienna along the Danube, and
then Prague and Berlin, she said, from Gallipoli to Suleiman
the Magnificent to liz Domania. Being a regular stuff you
missed in history class, listener has made this trip so
much more enjoyable. I know things about history because of you.
As proof of your world domination, our check guide at
(26:54):
the Prague Castle cited your episode on suppontification when we
visited the soap Lady of Prague que. Oh my gosh, Amy,
that's the best story of all time. Love that story.
I loved it so much. Uh. And then she makes
a suggestion that I might use in the near future,
so hopefully, and she said us this beautiful postcard. Uh,
(27:16):
and I just love it and thank you so much.
I really really appreciate you telling us that, because that
was super fun. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at housetu works
dot com, or also at Facebook dot com, slash mist
in History on Twitter at misston History, Pinterest dot com,
slash mist in History, missed in History dot tumbler dot com.
We're on Instagram and missed in History. Basically, any of
(27:38):
the places you might go to look at social things,
you can put miss in History and you'll find us. Uh,
that's really we should do a quick summation that wig instant.
If you would like to research a little bit more
about what we've talked about today, you can go to
our parents site, how stuff Works typing the word mining
or mind and you will turn up a few articles,
including what happens to abandon the minds and how underground
(28:01):
mining works. You would like to visit us online, you
can do that at missed in history dot com. We
have an archive of all of the existing episodes back
to the very beginning of the podcast as well as
show notes for any of the episodes since Tracy and
I have been working on the show together, as well
as the occasional blog poster other goody you get to
see some pictures that are associated with podcasts. It's a
(28:21):
fun time. So come I visit us at missed in
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