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The Drummond Colliery Disaster, 1873
The Drummond Colliery Disaster of May 1873 was Nova Scotia's first large-scale mining catastrophe. The Drummond Colliery, located in Westville in the Pictou coalfield, employed approximately 350 men and boys; both gunpowder and pick-axes were used to extract the coal.
On Tuesday 13 May 1873, a miner named Robert McLeod set a routine gunpowder charge in the uppermost coalface; an unusual amount of gas was ignited and poured out. Although he attempted to extinguish the flames for twenty minutes, the mine filled with smoke, ventilation stopped and gas continued to accumulate. The manager, John Dunn, recognized that the fire was out of control and ordered an evacuation. It was too late; as he attempted to leave, the first explosion occurred and most of the miners then working underground were immediately killed or injured.
Miners from nearby collieries quickly arrived and began attempts to rescue trapped men and boys — whose moans could be heard distinctly, carried upward through the mine's air shaft. In the midst of the confusion there was a second explosion. Edward Burns was caught while descending into the mine and was killed immediately; two other rescuers, Hudson and Coxon, were busily studying a plan of the colliery when they narrowly escaped being crushed by a boulder hurled from the depths.
Fourteen-hundred-foot flames shot up from the mine, while stones, timber and gear were hurled from smaller pits adjacent to the main shaft and thrown a quarter-mile into the woods. Residents of the nearby miners' 'square' (company housing) were driven from their homes by falling debris, while explosions continued to rumble throughout that night and into the following day.
Provincial newspapers soon reported that "The earth for miles around was shaken with the violence of the explosion. The people living at Westville and Stellarton were very much frightened, as they knew not how far the disaster would extend, or how soon another such explosion would occur." Westville was in mourning, shops were closed, and "Men and women wander about in groups, their saddened countenances betokening the great grief that has fallen upon them....Nearly every family here lost some relation or friend by this terrible calamity."
Over the next five days, the mine was flooded and filled with brush, gravel and debris until it was hermetically sealed.