Produced by Louise Hope, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Transcriber’s Note: All footnotes are grouped at the end of the file. Those that include non-bibliographic information are _also_ shown after their referring paragraph. This UTF-8 file includes a few less common fractions such as ⅛ and ⅔. Readers who cannot see these characters may prefer the Latin-1 version of the file.] * * * * * AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS Instituted 1852 TRANSACTIONS Paper No. 1171 FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS OF MINE ACCIDENTS, STRUCTURAL MATERIALS, AND FUELS.[1] By HERBERT M. WILSON, M. Am. Soc. C. E. With Discussion by Messrs. KENNETH ALLEN, HENRY KREISINGER, WALTER O. SNELLING, A. BARTOCCINI, H. G. STOTT, B. W. DUNN, and HERBERT M. WILSON. INTRODUCTION. The mine disaster, which occurred at Cherry, Ill., on November 13th, 1909, when 527 men were in the mine, resulting in the entombment of 330 men, of whom 310 were killed, has again focused public attention on the frequent recurrence of such disasters and their appalling consequences. Interest in the possible prevention of such disasters, and the possible means of combating subsequent mine fires and rescuing the imprisoned miners, has been heightened as it was not even by the series of three equally extensive disasters which occurred in 1907, for the reason that, after the Cherry disaster, 20 men were rescued alive after an entombment of one week, when practically all hope of rescuing any of the miners had been abandoned. This accident, occurring, as it does, a little more than 1½ years after the enactment of legislation by Congress instructing the Director of the United States Geological Survey to investigate the causes and possible means of preventing the loss of life in coal-mining operations, makes this an opportune time to review what has been done by the Geological Survey during this time, toward carrying out the intent of this Act. It may be stated with confidence, that had such a disaster occurred a year or more ago, all the entombed men must have perished, as it would have been impossible to enter the mine without the protection afforded by artificial respiratory apparatus. Moreover, but for the presence of the skilled corps of Government engineers, experienced by more than a year’s training in similar operations in more than twenty disasters, the mine would have been sealed until the fire had burned out, and neither the dead, nor those who were found alive, would have been recovered for many weeks. In the interval great suffering and loss would have been inflicted on the miners, because of enforced idleness, and on the mine owners because of continued inability to re-open and resume operations.