Gresford Mining Disaster 80th anniversary to be marked by special services

The anniversary of the Gresford Disaster, which took the lives of 266 men, will be marked today at a series of special events.

It was on September 22, 1934 that an explosion ripped through the Dennis Section at the colliery killing the men.

In all 261 miners, three rescue men and one surface worker died, leaving 164 widows and 242 fatherless children. Following the disaster the colliery was closed for years putting 1,700 men on the dole.

All the casualties lived in the Wrexham area but only 11 bodies were ever recovered.

At 11am the annual memorial service will take place at the Gresford Miners Memorial Wheel and a service will take place in All Saints Church at 2pm.

Meanwhile at Wrexham Museum a special exhibition pays tribute to the men and their families.

Visitors will be able to listen to the stories of ex miners, watch original film footage and explore fascinating objects and interactive exhibits in the Museum’s Mining Memories exhibition.

Work began sinking the pit at Gresford in 1908 by Westminster and United Collieries Group.

It was completed in 1911 and the mine was one of the deepest in the Denbighshire Coalfield. The Dennis shaft reached depths of about 2,260 feet.

By 1934, a total of 2,200 coal miners were employed at the colliery, with 1,850 working underground and 350 on the surface. Three coal seams were worked at Gresford. The Dennis shaft produced softer industrial coal but was prone to firedamp.

Gresford was always known for its big concentration of gas. Today it would have been siphoned off and used to fire surface boilers or fed into the domestic mains.

But in 1934 it dominated mining often killing men. Rescuers battled for 40 or more hours trying to push back the fires in an effort to reach the men known to be trapped behind the fire, but advanced no more than a yard or two. The first blast had come in the early hours of the Saturday.

An inquiry was launched - the likely cause was an explosion caused by a build-up of gas, chiefly methane, which was ignited, possibly simply by a spark from a metal tool – but no answers were provided, and to this day it is still unknown what caused the explosion.

Six men at work on the edge of the seam made their way out by devious routes.

Teddy Andrews, one of the six men to escape the flames, said after: “One fellow said: ‘Wait until somebody comes for us.’ But nobody was coming. It was the last time we saw them.”

Others were caught by the initial blast so ferocious it hurled men off their feet in different parts of the mine. If they were not killed in the first blast, they could have died in the deadly fire-damp gas or the fires that raged after. Only the winding gear built into a slate plinth remains.

But the disaster dominated public life long after, with an inevitable public enquiry bringing top experts and lawyers, headed by Sir Hartley Shawcross, Sir Patrick Hastings and Sir Stafford Cripps.

Evidence was given by the North Wales Miners Association, the Mines Inspectorate and the Gresford owners. But with most of it buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface, and other evidence partisan and contradictory, there was opportunity to trawl through records and challenge their accuracy at the hearing.

At the end there emerged specimen charges against the manager William Bonsall and many of his lesser officials, but in the end all but those against Bonsall were dropped.

He was charged with failing to keep records of air flow, As a result the company was fined £40 with £350 costs which seemed paltry compared to size of the disaster.

Earlier this year British Pathé released its entire collection onto online video sharing site YouTube including news footage of the disaster.

A new group has also been established, The Friends of Gresford Colliery Disaster, and visitors will be able to find out more about how to join and become involved at the Wrexham Museum exhibition.

Monday 22 September 2014

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/gresford-mining-disaster-80th-anniversary-7807364

Gaza families mourn amid failure to find missing shipwreck victims

More than two weeks after a boat carrying migrants to Europe sunk off the coast of Malta, none of the bodies of Palestinians who are thought to have drowned at sea have been recovered by search teams.

Eight Palestinians are known to have survived the Sept. 6 shipwreck that killed around 500 migrants, and they are being cared for between Italy, Greece, and Malta.

But Palestinian ambassador to Italy Mai al-Kaila on Saturday told Ma’an that rescuers have had difficulties recovering bodies from the sea because the boat capsized in international waters.

Despite this, however, she said that Italian coastal guards are continuing the search for the missing.

Al-Kaila said that Italian authorities have promised to give political asylum to two Palestinians who survived the shipwreck, and the pair will also be allowed to bring their families to live in Italy.

Meanwhile, Marwan Tubasi, Palestine’s ambassador to Greece, told Ma’an Saturday that authorities in that country had granted three Palestinian survivors permission to stay for six months, and that the embassy was working to acquire them Palestinian passports as well.

The fate of those who were unable to make it to European shores, however, is far less certain at this stage, with ambassadors in all three countries pointing out that coast guards have failed to locate any of the missing Palestinians from the sea so far.

In Gaza, some families have already started mourning their missing loved ones, as the days have dragged on and no indication of their survival has surfaced.

Dozens of family members of the missing migrants on Sunday demonstrated outside the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, urging authorities to give them more information on the whereabouts of their missing loved ones.

“15 days have passed and we still haven’t received any news about my husband and my son,” said protester Um Udayy Nahhal.

Speaking to reporters while carrying a photo of her husband Fawzi Nahhal and her seven-year-old son Udayy, she said that the pair were among the migrants feared dead in the shipwreck.

“It is my very right to know whether they are alive or dead,” she told reporters.

A spokesman of the families of missing Gazan migrants also urged the ICRC and other human rights groups to reveal the destiny of the missing migrants for the last 15 days.

Gaza resident Khalil Abu Shammala told Ma’an that two of his sons were on the boat which capsized two weeks ago, one of an unknown number of Palestinians from Gaza who fled to Egypt before boarding the vessel to seek a better life across the sea in Europe.

“The families of the missing people have been in open mourning” for the last two weeks he said, appealing to President Mahmoud Abbas to help uncover information regarding those still missing from the shipwreck.

A key part of the problem relates to the issue of jurisdiction, since the fact that the boat capsized in international water — meaning more than 200 nautical miles away from any coast — means no nearby state is immediately responsible for recovery, while the home states of the migrants themselves generally lack the ability to carry out any rescue operations.

Despite this, the undersecretary of the Palestinian foreign ministry Taysir Jaradat told Ma’an that he would lead a Palestinian delegation to Italy, Malta, and Greece in the coming days to follow up on the boat accident.

The delegation, he said, plans to ask authorities in the three countries for information about the missing Palestinians who potentially drowned in their territorial waters.

Jaradat added that the Palestinian foreign ministry had contacted the Egyptian authorities and asked them to prevent human traffickers from sending migrant boats from Egyptian territories.

Any action on the part of Egyptian authorities, however, will likely fail to stem the flow of migrants across the sea, which has shot up to its highest level in recorded memory this year.

So far, watchdogs say that more than 120,000 migrants have crossed the sea in 2014 alone so far, while more than 2,500 have perished.

The surge is the result of political instability and a lack of economic prospects across the southern Mediterranean and Africa, and the number includes many Palestinians who have fled Syria as well as Gaza via boat from Egypt.

Due to unrest in neighboring Libya and heavy surveillance of the seas off the Moroccan coast, thousands of migrants have started making the trek from Egypt in recent months, a far more lengthy — and far more dangerous — trip than before.

The migrants include hundreds of Gazans who are thought to have escaped via tunnels to Egypt in order to flee the nearly two-month offensive that left more than 2,000 dead and 110,000 homeless in the tiny coastal enclave.

The mass devastation wreaked by the Israeli bombardment has dimmed Gaza’s economic prospects for the near future even further, and as Egypt continues to crack down on movement of goods and people through tunnels — including shooting one man dead on Saturday — the tide is likely to continue.

Monday 22 September 2014

http://www.eurasiareview.com/22092014-gaza-families-mourn-amid-failure-find-missing-shipwreck-victims/

10 dead, 35 missing after migrant ship sinks off Libyan coast

At least 10 migrants have died in a shipreck off Libya.

35 people are still lost at sea and presumed to have drowned, according to Italian media.

The overcrowded boat was attempting the crossing from North Africa to Italy.

It sank around 50 kilometres from the Libyan coast.

Fifty-five people were saved by a Singapore-flagged merchant ship.

The ship went to the boat's aid after the Italian coastguards received an emergency call by satellite telephone from the vessel.

The survivors said the boat had been carrying around 100 people. Rescuers counted at least 10 bodies in the water.

Italy's coastguard requested other ships in the area change course to the wreck's location to help search for any other survivors.

Earlier this month, 500 people were feared drowned after their boat sank off Malta, leaving just 10 survivors.

According to the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR over 2,500 people have drowned or gone missing attempting to cross from North Africa to Europe this year.

Monday 22 September 2014

http://www.enca.com/10-dead-35-missing-after-migrant-ship-sinks-libyan-coast