A Mine Fire That Might Never Be Put Out
Black Diamond Mine No. 12 faced possible permanent abandonment after a fire underground, with flooding and spontaneous combustion complicating recovery.
It is believed that the fire in Black Diamond Mine No. 12 may result in its permanent abandonment. To flood it would require a month, and several months would then be consumed in pumping out the water. This would cost the company a great deal of money. Then, too, the coal is of such a nature that once thoroughly soaked with water and then having the air turned in on it, spontaneous combustion is likely to result. Had the mine been working at the time the fire broke out, the death list would in all probability have been something awful, as there is only one exit.
“Had the mine been working at the time the fire broke out, the death list would in all probability have been something awful, as there is only one exit.”
Coal mining sustained towns like Black Diamond, but fires and single-exit shafts made the work lethal. The 1895 fire foreshadowed later disasters in Washington's coal fields and the slow decline of company towns. The mine's possible abandonment was an early warning about the fragility of boom-time industrial towns.
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