Just after midnight on March 22, 1915, part of Britannia Mountain fell off, just above a mining camp.
“AVALANCHE OVERWHELMS BRITANNIA MINE HEAD,” screamed the front-page headline in the Vancouver World. “50 MEN KILLED, 15 INJURED.”
In fact, there were 56 people killed, and they weren’t all men — several women and children were crushed when Jane Camp was buried under 15 metres of debris.
“In the grey light of the stars, snow, boulders and uprooted trees thundered down into the little cup-like hollow made by the mountains that rise all above the camp,” the World reported a few hours after the disaster.
“No one knows how many were swept into the depression by the slide. More than a thousand men were employed at the Britannia mine on the copper ledges or on the machinery in and around the mine.
“Hundreds of these were sleeping in their bunks, and it is feared scores have been ground up in the terrible rush of debris or smothered in snow.”
The disaster occurred in the dark, about 5.5 kilometres up the mountain above the nearest town, Britannia Beach. Communications was cut by the slide, but about 12:45 a.m. workers down the mountain knew something was amiss when hoppers that were supposed to be filled with ore were arriving empty.
A search party was sent up the mountain, in the dark, and discovered Jane Camp had been demolished.
“The cookhouse, camp-house, engine-house, store, offices, officials’ cottages and some shacks were wiped out,” reported the Province, “The volume of debris did not stop until it had reached Britannia Creek, about a mile and a half below.”
Miner Harry Baxter was one of the survivors.
“Along about midnight came a terrific wind,” he said. “It blew like the furies, and in about two seconds there was a noise which some of the boys thought was 300 cases of explosives going off in the magazine.”
A miner’s wife named Mrs. Owen had a similar story.
“I thought it was a hurricane started to blow,” she said. “You’ve heard a big wind when it tears down trees, and it thunders and lightning crashes — it was just like that. The lights went out, (and) I could hear terrible moaning.”
There were some miraculous escapes, like the three miners who were sleeping on the second floor of the mine office and were swept 300 feet, but lived. But most of the people in the path of the slide were killed.
“One of the most pathetic sights of the whole tragic scene is Thomas McCullough, shift boss, (who) is digging, digging, digging … in the hope of recovering the bodies of his wife and five-year-old daughter Isabella,” the Province reported. “Willing hands are helping him, but his task is a tremendous one. His gaunt form, with pale and drawn features and bloodshot eyes, is to be seen picking, shovelling, digging and scraping amongst the earth and rocks.”
There were various theories as to what caused the slide. The Sun reported a survivor thought it was “the constant dynamiting of the stone ribs of the mountain.” The World reported “there is a small lake at the top of the mountain, and it was suggested that seepage from this had loosened up the soil and rock.”
Geologist S.G. Evans has reviewed the evidence and believes the slide “originated as a rock slope failure from the northeast side of Mammoth Bluffs, above the portal of the Bluff Mine (beside Jane Camp).”
In a paper on the disaster that is posted online, Evans writes “the rock fabric of the Mammoth Bluffs area was dominated by schistosity that dips steeply to the southwest, creating conditions favourable for toppling on northeast facing slopes.”
Schistosity is flakes of rock in sheets. Evans writes “the rock mass” may have been “‘forced outward’ by water produced by two or three days thaw,” which caused it to topple, and produced the slide.
The Britannia disaster is the second deadliest rock slide in Canadian history, after the Frank Slide in Alberta that killed 70 people. Sadly, in 1921, the Britannia mine complex was hit by another natural disaster when a flood killed 37 people at Britannia Beach.
Saturday 21 March 2015
http://www.vancouversun.com/THIS+WEEK+HISTORY+1915+Britannia+Mountain+disaster/10906620/story.html
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