When she learned that her husband was among the dead, Mrs. Joseph Jones broke through the guard of fifty State constabulary and attempted to dash herself to the bottom of the mine. She was caught and restrained just as she was about to make the fatal jump. Mrs. George Acker became violently insane when she heard that her husband was in the mine, and was arrested and placed under restraint.
At 1 o’clock Peter Arnold, an American, was brought out of the Rachel shaft alive. Joseph Kearney, one of the rescuers, reported that others were living.
The Marianna mine, which had been in operation less than three months, was considered the model mine of the world. Every device known to modern invention had been installed to prevent just such a tragedy as occurred to-day. But, wrecked by a mysterious explosion, the very machinery which was to have made accident impossible hampered the rescuers at their work. They did not understand the wonderful mechanism which bolstered the great mine with such a network of contrivances, and they were delayed in the attempt to bore through to the bodies of the men lying dead in the bottom of the shaft.
The explosion came just before the noon hour in the Rachel shaft. It was so terrific that the blast, blowing up the whole length of the deep shaft, tore loose the giant elevator cage at the surface of the mine and hurled it 300 feet away.
Two men were in the cage at the time. Both were instantly killed, the head of one of them being literally blown off.
Immediately following the explosion, rescuers began frantically to burrow at the mouth of the mine in a futile effort to dig down through the tremendous masses of coal that blocked the upper reaches of the shaft, while other rescuers, headed by President John K. Jones, of the Pittsburg-Buffalo Coal Company, rushed to the scene in special trains from Pittsburg and Monongahela with the latest appliances, which were erected at the head of the shaft to bore to the entombed men.
Five thousand women and children and miners thronged the mouth of the mine, the former weeping piteously and pleading for the rescue of their fathers or brothers.
The officials of the mine are in a pitiful condition. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the Marianna fireproof, and experts have assured them that such a disaster as occurred to-day was impossible. In the excitement and panic it is impossible thus far to learn the names of the victims. But the books of the company indicate that the majority of the 275 buried in the Rachel are Americans and that most of the others are English miners imported by the company two months ago to work the richest shafts.