SEPTEMBER 18, 1959
It was one of the most tragic days in the history of Scottish mining. In just a few minutes, 47 miners were dead, 41 women were widowed and 76 children lost their fathers. The men died when an underground inferno broke out in the Auchengeich Colliery, in Lanarkshire. Just one miner survived.
At about 7am on that Friday, the early morning shift had clocked on. They were being carried to the coalface in a small train of bogies with no inkling that 1,400ft below the surface a deadly sequence of events was in motion. A canvas transmission belt on an unattended electrically powered fan had jumped off its pulley and was jammed. Friction ignited the belt which, in turn, sparked off oil vaporised from the shaft bearings and the oil deposits around the fan.
The flames, fed by the draught, ignited nearby timbers. The fire filled the main roadway on which the men were riding with a lethal cloud of carbon monoxide.
Tommy Green was the sole survivor . He was a strapping 6ft 4in, 50-year-old dad of six girls. He later said: “As we walked towards the pit, I detected a faint smell of smoke. Down at the pit bottom, I smelled smoke again. And again I ignored it. We’d smelled it before and nothing had happened.”
He added: “There was no heat. No sound of flames. Only thick, choking smoke.” Miraculously he was rescued. The youngest to die was George McEwan, 20, and the oldest was Henry Clayton, 62.