Courrières mine disaster
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
on 10 March 1906. This disaster was surpassed only by the Benxihu Colliery
Benxihu Colliery
Benxihu Colliery , located in Benxi, Liaoning, China, was first mined in 1905. It started as a iron and coal mining project under joint Japanese and Chinese control. As time passed, the project came more and more under Japanese control...
accident in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
on April 26, 1942, which killed 1,549 miners. A dust explosion
Dust explosion
A dust explosion is the fast combustion of dust particles suspended in the air in an enclosed location. Coal dust explosions are a frequent hazard in underground coal mines, but dust explosions can occur where any powdered combustible material is present in an enclosed atmosphere.- Conditions for...
, the cause of which is not known with certainty, devastated a coal mine operated by the Compagnie des mines de houille de Courrières (founded in 1852) between the villages of Méricourt
Méricourt, Pas-de-Calais
Méricourt is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:Méricourt is a former coal mining town, nowadays a farming and light industrial town, southeast of Lens, at the junction of the D33, D40 and the D262 roads...
(404 people killed), Sallaumines
Sallaumines
-Administration:Sallaumines is located in the Pas-de-Calais department. It belongs to the Lens-Liévin interommunality which consists of 36 communes, with a total population of 250,000 inhabitants.-History:...
(304 killed), Billy-Montigny
Billy-Montigny
Billy-Montigny is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:An ex-coalmining industrial town situated just east of the centre of Lens at the junction of the N43 and D46 roads...
(114 people killed), and Noyelles-sous-Lens
Noyelles-sous-Lens
Noyelles-sous-Lens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France.-Administration:Noyelles-sous-Lens belongs to the intercommunality of Lens-Liévin, which consists of 36 communes, with a total population of 250,000 inhabitants.-Twin towns:...
(102 people killed) about 2 km (1 mi) to the east of Lens
Lens, Pas-de-Calais
Lens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
, in the Pas-de-Calais département (about 220 km, or 140 miles, north of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
).
A large explosion was heard shortly after 06:30 on the morning of Saturday 10 March 1906. An elevator cage at Shaft 3 was thrown to the surface, damaging pit-head workings; windows and roofs were blown out on the surface at Shaft 4; an elevator cage raised at Shaft 2 contained only dead or unconscious miners.
Initial cause
It is generally agreed that the majority of the deaths and destruction were caused by an explosion of coal dustCoal dust
Coal dust is a fine powdered form of coal, which is created by the crushing, grinding, or pulverizing of coal. Because of the brittle nature of coal, coal dust can be created during mining, transportation, or by mechanically handling coal.-Explosions:...
which swept through the mine. However it has never been ascertained what caused the initial ignition of the coal dust. Two main causes have been hypothesized:
- An accident of the handling of mining explosives.
- Ignition of methane by the naked flame of a miner's lamp.
There is evidence favoring both these hypotheses. Blasting was being done in the area believed to be the source of the explosion, after initial attempts to widen a gallery had been abandoned the previous day for lack of success. Many workers in the mine used lamps with naked flames (as opposed to the more expensive Davy lamp
Davy lamp
The Davy lamp is a safety lamp with a wick and oil vessel burning originally a heavy vegetable oil, devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.Sir...
s), despite the risk of gas explosions. As Monsieur Delafond, General Inspector of Mines, put it in his report:
Rescue attempts
Rescue attempts began quickly on the morning of the disaster, but were hampered by the lack of trained mine rescuers in France at that time, and by the scale of the disaster: at least two-thirds of the miners in the mine at the time of the explosion would be found to have perished, and many survivors were suffering from the effects of gas inhalation. Expert teams from Paris and from GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
arrived at the scene on 12 March. The first funerals occurred on 13 March, during an unseasonal snowstorm; 15,000 people attended. The funerals were a focus for the anger of the mining communities against the companies which owned the concessions, and the first strikes started the next day in the Courrières area, extending quickly to other areas in the départements of the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord.
The slow progress of the rescue could only exacerbate the tensions between the mining communities and the companies. By 1 April only 194 bodies had been brought to the surface. There were many accusations that the Compagnie des mines de Courrières was deliberately delaying the reopening of blocked shafts to prevent coalface fires (and hence to save the coal seams): more recent studies tend to consider such claims as exaggerated. The mine was unusually complex for its time, with the different pitheads being interconnected by underground galleries on many levels. Such complexity was supposed to help the access of rescuers in the case of an accident—it undoubtedly also helped the coal to be brought to the surface—but in fact contributed to the large loss of life by allowing the dust explosion to travel further and then by increasing the debris which had to be cleared by the rescuers. About 110 km (70 mi) of tunnel are believed to have been affected by the explosion. Gérard Dumont of the Centre historique minier de Lewarde has shown that the plans of the mine existing at the time of the accident were difficult to interpret: some of them measured the depth of galleries by reference to the minehead, others by reference to sea level.
Survivors
About six hundred miners were able to reach the surface during the hours immediately after the explosion. Many were severely burned and/or suffering from the effects of mine gases.A group of thirteen survivors, known later as the rescapés, was found by rescuers on 30 March, twenty days after the explosion. They had survived at first by eating the food which the victims had taken underground for their lunch, later by slaughtering one of the mine horses. The two eldest (39 and 40 years old) were awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
, the other eleven (including three younger than 18 years of age) received the Médaille d'or du courage. A final survivor was found on 4 April.
Public response
The disaster at the Courrières mine was one of the first in France to be reported on a large scale by the mediaMass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
of the day. The Law on the Freedom of the Press of 29 July 1881
Law on the Freedom of the Press of 29 July 1881
The Law on the Freedom of the Press of 29 July 1881 , often called the Press Law of 1881, is a law that defines the freedoms and responsibilities of the media and publishers in France. It provides a legal framework for publications and regulates the display of advertisements on public roads...
had specified the basis for a (relative) freedom of the press, and Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
, the regional capital less than 40 km (25 mi) away, had at least five daily newspapers whose reporters engaged in a fierce competition for news from the mine. Photographs could not then be published in newspapers for technical reasons, but were widely distributed as postcards; on average, each French resident sent fifteen postcards during 1906. A postcard of the thirteen rescapés was available nine days after their discovery.
The first public appeal for funds to help the victims and their families was established the day after the explosion by Le Réveil du Nord, a Lille daily newspaper. In the newspaper L'Humanité
L'Humanité
L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...
of the next day, socialist and pacifist politician Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
wrote:
It is a call for social justice that comes to the nation's representants from the depths of the burning mines. It is the harsh and suffering destiny of work that, once more, manifests itself to all. And would political action be something else than the sad game of ambitions and vanities if it didn't propose to itself the liberation of the workers' people, the organisation of a better life for those who work?
Such appeals became widespread, and were supplemented by the sale of special collections of postcards depicting the disaster. The different appeals were eventually subsumed by an official fund—itself established by a law enacted only four days after the explosion—and a total of 750,000 francs was raised. This at a time when the daily wage for a miner (a well-paid job compared to other manual work) was less than six francs. Over half the total was contributed by the Compagnie des mines de houille de Courrières and by the Comité central des houillières de France (Central Committee of French Coal Mines, an employers' association).
On March 18, a strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
was publicized and quickly extended itself to all of the region. Minister of Interior Georges Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...
went to visit the region twice, but "no promises were kept", according to L'Humanité.
External links
- Centre historique minier de Lewarde
- "Commemorating France’s Worst Mining Tragedy: 1099 Workers Perished to Profit the Bosses", article from L'HumanitéL'HumanitéL'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...
. Translated from "Ils étaient 1099, morts pour le profit", published on March 11, 2006.