Скачать или смотреть 21st of January, 1960 – A Coal Mine Collapses At Holly Country, South Africa, Killing 435 Miners.

21st of January, 1960 – A Coal Mine Collapses At Holly Country, South Africa, Killing 435 Miners.

The Coalbrook mining disaster occurred on this day in, 1960, in South Africa when A coal mining collapse trapped 437 miners underground, The miners were suffocated by methane gas and crushed to death by rockfall.

The disaster occurred in the Coalbrook coal mine of Clydesdale Colliery, About 1,000 miners were in the mine at the time when they felt a strong blast wind, many of whom rushed up to the surface but were instructed to return underground or face imprisonment. Only two miners refused to go back underground.

The accident was caused by cascading pillar failure where a few pillars fail initially and this increases the load on the adjacent pillars causing them to fail. This cascading failure caused pillar collapse over an area covering 324 hectares.

The disaster prompted the government to set up the National Mine Disaster Fund which is used in compensation for miners affected.

It remains one of the worst mining disasters in the country's history.

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