Retired miner still haunted by explosion
Forty-five years have passed since six men were injured in Glace Bay fire
The memories are burned into Bobbie Green’s mind far deeper than the scars left behind on his face and hands.
Forty-five years ago, Green and five other men were injured in an explosion at No. 26 colliery in Glace Bay.
The retired miner still gets choked up when he recalls what happened that day, Sept. 18, 1973.
“I heard ‘rvoomph’ and then ‘boom’ and the gas went down the wall probably 300 feet,” said the 78-year-old.
“You know it’s going to roar up after you and it’s going to
be twice as hot coming up because it catches the dust and the heat.”
Green and his fellow miners
were cutting coal with a shear when they struck a gas pocket.
He remembers what he says looked like “polliwogs” or burning particles of dust rushing toward him.
Five other injured men were identified as Angus MacDonald, Fred Mullins, Chester Gillette, William Jackson and Arnold Clark.
“I put my hands up to my face to shield my eyes and when I took them down my skin was off my face,” said Green, a resident of Donkin. “It was like a thick cobweb. And I had gloves on, well, they had to cut those off.”
“I heard ‘rvoomph’ and then ‘boom’ and the gas went down the wall probably 300 feet.”
Bobbie Green
Green said he began mining at age 16. At the time of the explosion, he was 33-years old, married, and a father to four children.
There was no governmentfunded physiotherapy, so Green remains unable to curl his right hand into a proper fist.
Green kept copies of newspaper articles that detailed his ordeal, including one with the words “Daddy got hurt” handwritten overtop by his then-sixyear-old daughter Brenda Lee.
According to the clipping, there were 400 men underground at the time, and 75 at 19 north wall where the fire occurred at 7:30 p.m. The mine was evacuated. Draegermen were called to the pithead but weren’t needed.
Mine manager Jim MacLellan was quoted in the clipping as saying the mine would remain closed overnight but would resume production with the start of the next morning shift.
Green said he was about fivekilometres underground and had no choice but to walk himself out.
“I spit up blood and dust for quite a while,” he said. “And it plays head games on you too. You can’t get it out of your mind.
“I remember it took us about two-and-a-half hours to get out. They took us to the community hospital and the pain was unbelievable. You could smell your hair and your flesh burning.”
The injured miners were isolated in one room and cared for by multiple doctors and about 10 or more nurses.
“We all got a needle – morphine,” he said. “When they gave us that needle I felt great. I asked to go home. And the doctor said maybe in the morning. In the morning — I knew I wasn’t going anywhere because I couldn’t see (due to my eyes swelling).”
Green sustained second- and third-degree burns. His worst injuries were to his face, especially his nose and ears and he also sustained burns to his arms and hands.
The skin has healed but he still experiences tenderness from time to time.
Green returned to work before Christmas that year because he needed the money.
Before the fire he was only making about $28 a day.
“There was no such thing as a credit card if you needed groceries. If you didn’t have the money to buy something or somebody wouldn’t help you out — you didn’t get nothing,” he said.
A fire at the same mine earlier that year was attributed to gas. No. 12 Colliery in New Waterford was closed a year earlier after a fire killed a miner.
Green was among the men who volunteered to bring up the dead and injured from one of the worst mining disasters in Cape Breton history.
On Feb. 24, 1979, No. 26 colliery was the scene of another serious fire, this time ending in tragedy. Draegermen went in first to make sure it was safe for bare-faced miners like Green to go in. The men were found six or seven miles out under the ocean and were carried back on stretchers. In all, 12 were killed and several others were badly burned.
But despite continued fears of disaster, Green enjoyed working underground and said he would do it all over again if given the chance. He worked in the mines until 1990.
“Men were good to work with — that’s what I miss about not working there,” he said. “Since the mines closed you hardly see anybody. Miners are like the veterans, they’re getting less and less all the time.”
Asked his opinion on the state of the only current operating coal mine in Cape Breton, Green shook his head.
“It’s ridiculous that it’s not unionized,” he said of the Donkin mine, operated by Kameron Coal Management.
In 1984, yet another fire in No. 26 led to the closure of the mine.
When Green started mining in the mid-1950s, there were nine coal mines in the Glace Bay area, employing 10,000 men.