Frankfurter Zeitung 11.07.1930: carbonic acid outbreak raises question of safety of mountain works

In one of the worst Slums of the German Empire, in the forest, Burger area, has brought a terrible pit disaster, nameless pain and suffering on the people. "Probably no family of the 6,000 residents in the house on the count of the village is left of the disaster, spared," our correspondent reported. How large is the number of dead is not clear to the hour, as we write this. You must expect to add to that, the 92 dead, which have so far been recovered, many.

70 miners are still trapped in the depth of the gasified pit. The hope is to bring a larger part of them live to see the light of day, is very low. Grief, horror, despair is about a whole village, of all people, can the hardness of this Destiny discretion. Our heartfelt sympathy to the poor Victims and their hard-hit survivors.

We all know that the life of a miner of a thousand dangers is umlauert. There are only a few professions that are as threatened as that of the miner at work all the time. The safety technology in the mining industry has certainly made in the last few decades, extraordinary progress, and the design of the mining operation is considered at least to the same extent to the improvement of security facilities, such as on the improvement of the conveying capacity.

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Still find a number of dangers of mining are not, or only with a small effect still remains, which is to prevent or opposite can occur.

Also, there are large differences in the hazard of individual mines and mine areas. In addition to districts, which are sought only rarely, and usually to a lesser extent, elemental perils, and we have in Germany, but also areas that are getting hit once again from major disasters. One of them is the waldenburger coal area in front of everyone.

It is already reported that here a year ago, a firedamp explosion caused the collapse of the 33 miners that, in 1923, in this district, the worst mining disaster called on the Hinitzgrube 112 Dead. In the pit, on the now, the new terrible disaster has played in the last weeks, several coal acid outbreaks.

For the year 1929 were alone reported 25 outbreaks to. It is said that there were in Germany only four pits, in which carbonic acid outbreaks occurred, and that, in these pits, the risk of outbreaks in recent years have increased. While we have assumed so far that by means of safety measures, the risks of outbreaks sufficiently to be banned, had it been by the current outbreak, the have the a lot of times the strength of the earlier, of another taught.