Earl Cameron Writes from Australia:-At the tine of the Wankie colliery disaster in July 1972 when 427 miners lost their lives in a huge Methane gas explosion underground, I was a DSO stationed SB Wankie. On the actual day of the explosion I was on a few days leave in Bulawayo, staying at the Police Holiday cottage with some friends, Sven and Kerstin Liedberg. Sven was the Government Mining Engineer based in Wankie.
Sven was recalled from leave urgently. We had driven down in his car - a VW Variant - and raced back to Wankie, stopping briefly at Gwaai River hotel for a toilet break. On return to the car, the engine had seized. This is what happens to air cooled engines if you stop after a long hard drive – they just keep heating up and seize up. We soon discovered you are supposed to leave them running in such circumstances. We were eventually towed back to Wankie by a Police Land Rover, arriving late that same night.
The next morning, Sven went straight underground with the first PROTO rescue teams. I met him in Wankie town around midday. He had been underground all morning and as we stood talking I recall he was in tears and told me that no one would be getting out of the mine alive. The devastation he saw underground was so extensive that it had left him in no doubt as to the fate of the miners who had been underground at the time.
It took several days before hope was finally abandoned. During that time, the PM (Ian Douglas Smith) and the President (Clifford Du Pont) visited the mine site and met some of the families who had loved ones trapped underground. At that time I was assigned as close security officer to both dignitaries.
It was a dreadful time for Wankie, for the town and for everyone who lived and worked there for it was a close-knit community and we all knew each other which made it worse.
Earl has made available, to ORAFs, scanned pages that represented the magazine Illustrated Life Rhodesia dated 12 July 1972, containing an article on the disaster, which follows.
Wankie - The Long Wait
DEATH WATCH
from Reg Shay
At 10.29 a.m. green paw paws hung from the trees lining the pithead of Wankie's number two colliery. The sun was high on this balmy autumn day. An African policeman stood in his brick duty box a few feet from the entrance.
At 10.30 the paw paws were dead, charred to a cinder. The policeman was dead too. And so were hundreds of miners working three hundred feet below.
According to Fred Bezuidenhout, lamps superintendent, who was only thirty yards away, there were three explosions. "I was sitting in my office when I heard the faraway rumble of an explosion, then two quick ones which were very loud. They shook the building I was in and I went to look at the pit head. There was some smoke coming out. All of a sudden there was a roar and dust came rushing out at about 500 kilometres an hour.
The agony of Wankie had begun. "I saw people in this dust. One African was trying to crawl out but he couldn't see where he was going because of the blood. It was all over him. I grabbed him and pulled him away. I pulled three of them away ..."
THE DATE of the mine disaster will be indelibly imprinted in the minds of the people of Wankie: Tuesday 6th June, 1972.
The policeman was blown fifty yards, his box nearly demolished. A heavy trolley used for carrying miners in and out of the shaft shot out like a missile and smashed into a wall lining the top.
Beneath the shaft the explosion had broken die seals of used-up workings and released deadly methane gas, while carbon monoxide flowed freely through to the surface. At the pithead it was registering at point two. Point three—and it was greater than that down below—is instant death.
Giant ventilator fans, that could have given life saving air, were hit the whole length of the mine.
Four Africans near the top of the shaft were killed and eight injured, one of whom Fred Bezuidenhout pulled away. The injured man died later.
TWO HOURS after the explosion the pithead was crowded with wives, black and white, who stared hopelessly at the tunnel. Some offered a silent prayer, hoping that from the depths below would come life. The European women stood silently; the Africans began to wail in their traditional manner. "I wish 'to hell they would shut up" said one of the rescuers.
The first of the rescuers went down that afternoon and what they saw was summed up by Methodist Minister William Blakeway when he spoke of com-fort for the Africans: "The African is used to death but death on this sale is beyond his comprehension. They are in a state of near bewilderment. They just cannot imagine the size of this tragedy. It is so depressing that you can't give them hope. all I can give them is whatever comfort I can".
The rescuers, even then, had decided there was no hope for anyone surviving the holocaust of Wankie. The dynamite which blasted fifty yards down from the pithead brought in the walls of coal, making it difficult to pass. Further along, fires blazed, causing new hazard. By 1.15 am, as wives still waited, ft was decided to call off the search until morning.
When I asked one of the rescuers whether there was any chance of survival he replied: "I think there is a chance. There has got to be." But the carbon monoxide pouring from the mine belied his word's.
The miracle of Wankie was not to come.ON WEDNESDAY, teams wearing Proto breathing apparatus were down again.
At 8 am a school bus drove up to the mine with a handful of European children. "Why on earth did they bring that here?" snapped one of the weary wives. A little boy waved to his mother who was sitting on a bench. She smiled slightly and waved back, knowing what the little boy did not know: that he would never see his father again.
Later in the day the Anglo American officials — owners of the mine — had to make a decision more agonising than that of the mother who would talk to her son. They had to decide whether to allow the deadly carbon monoxide to flow out and prevent further rescue operations or blow it back.
Their decision to try the latter meant that the chances of anyone surviving in a pocket of air would be blown away when four huge ventilator fans, imported from South Africa, drove the gasses back dislodging any spare pockets.
Tension mounted in the early hours of Thursday morning after the Proto teams made their way 3 000 feet along the tunnel. They found four bodies, including a European. None of them had stood a chance. It was only a question of time before the general manager of the mine, Mr. Gordon Livingstone-Blevins, would announce that there was no hope.
Sixteen rescue teams went in relays down the shaft. They even carried two canaries with them in an age old, simple, but effective, gas test. If they lived, the area was clear: if they died, it was not.
THE BELL RANG seven times. It was the bell of death similar to that of 1665, in London during the Plague, which was then accompanied by the cry: "Bring out your dead".
At the Wankie shaft, seven bells meant the dead were being brought out. Slowly the trolley rose from the depths with two bodies upon it, wrapped in red and black blankets.
Black screens had been placed around the shaft for fear that the African women would become violent in their grief when they witnessed the scene. Similar plastic screens were put up to make a temporary mortuary where identification could take place.
The women moved to the mortuary area and tension rose. Police stood guard in a long line. "This could be nasty," said one Anglo American Official. A policeman moved across to him. "Don't tell the press anything about this" he said.
An African priest stood up, talked to the women, and slowly they moved away; flash-point had passed.
Inside the mortuary several African men, face masks covering them looked at mutilated remains. None could be identified. Seven bells rang out again; this time the body took up most of the trolley. Gas had bloated it beyond recognition. Subsequently the rescuers could not tell whether the man was black or white.
At the first funeral about 5 000 people turned up at the little colliery cemetery. Hundreds of graves had been dug by convicts in anticipation that they would be filled. But it was not to be. The tragedy of the funerals was that the wife of a man being buried could be pushed to the back of the crowd. The husband of the woman weeping at the front could be lying dead in the shaft. Only fingerprint tests taken on the dead men might some day bring about their identification.
THE DECISION to close the mine was taken by Mr. Livingstone-Blevins on Friday night.
On Saturday morning at 10 o'clock a service was held a little distance from the shaft and the miners of Number Two shaft were officially buried as their giant tomb was closed.
One European widow screamed: "You must try again," for no wife will believe that her husband is dead until she sees his body.
On Sunday Rhodesian Premier Ian Smith arrived to inspect the shaft and attend the memorial service at the nearby sports field. Mr. Harry Oppenheimer also attended the service. A few days earlier the President, Clifford Dupont, had visited the scene.
The whole of Wankie attended the service. Blackened trees, baobab trees, msasa, kaffir boom, and flamboyant stood sentinels out, only slightly lower than the figure for a normal working Monday. Wankie had started to come alive again.
NOW, WEEKS LATER, production is at the highest peak possible. A commission of inquiry, set up by the Ministry of Mines, is probing the cause of the explosions that tore through No. 2 Colliery, leaving the underground workings in a state of utter devastation. And questions of insurance and compensation have been discussed between mine management and workmen's compensation experts.
Many of the relatives of the 390 dead African mineworkers have returned to their homes in the tribal trust lands—and foreign countries.
The Zambians and the Tanzanians showed great reluctance to leave Rhodesia. They were suspicious that they wouldn't be paid their compensation money once they got back to their native lands. There were no such fears among the nationals of Mozambique, Angola and South Africa.
No one knows, yet, the total of the insurance and compensation that will be paid out. For the Anglo American no official amount has been specified. But depending upon the circumstances, how many children have been left fatherless, for instance, sums in the region of $30 000 have been quoted.
Then there is the matter of the President's Disaster Fund. So much money has been collected, both in Rhodesia and overseas, that no one has had the time to sit down and consider how it is going to be distributed.
But all the money in the world will never replace the brave men who died—either in the eyes of their families or in the eyes of the Wankie Colliery Co.For Wankie has lost some good men. Men like Basil Papenfus, the No. 2 manager. He lived for mining and had risen to his position of authority in ten short years. He was tipped to become the next general manager. Now they will have to find someone else. And that will be a difficult task. "You don't come across men like those who died every day," said one mine official.
There are months of hard work ahead. But as the Prime Minister, Mr. Ian Smith, forecast when he visited the scene of tragedy — Wankie is taking the disaster in its stride.
It is fighting back.
One of the 16 rescue teams—they risked their lives for the chance-in-a-
million of finding survivors.
Bringing up the dead.
Testing for gas.
Waiting for the worst. Said a priest: "The African is used to death,
but death on this scale is beyond his comprehension.
The President visited Wankie; he is pictured talking
to newsmen.
(Pictures by Ministry of Information and John Evans.)THE COSTfrom Gordon RossON JUNE 12, less than a week after Wankie became associated with the world's worst mining disasters, the Colliery Company's general manager, Gordon Livingstone- Blevins, was awake and dressed long before dawn.
No. 3 Colliery, which had been idle for several days because the miners had been granted permission to mourn the dead, was due to go back to work. And the general manager wanted to be below ground to talk to his men.
Gordon Livingstone - Blevins trudged miles that morning, down long corridors of coal—his foot- steps breaking the eerie silence. He went to the work faces 290 feet below ground, where blasting was again in progress. He watched the tons of coal that help to keep Rhodesian industry alive start rolling again—back to the surface.
Three hours later, overcome by exhaustion brought on by nights without sleep, he made his way back to the shaft collar. "I am proud of my chaps," he said. "They have done exactly as I expected."
Seven hundred and thirty three miners had clocked in. And at the surface, 146 workers had reported. It was an 85 per cent turn out, only slightly lower than the figure for a normal working Monday.
Wankie had started to come alive again.NOW, WEEKS LATER, production is at the highest peak possible. A commission of inquiry, set up by the Ministry of Mines, is probing the cause of the explosions that tore through No. 2 Colliery, leaving the underground workings in a chaos.
Wankie Colliery, and the Workmen's Compensation Board have agreed to honour the African custom of polygamy. And that means there are hundreds of families scattered throughout Southern and Central Africa still unaccounted for—but entitled to money.
THERE ARE no such problems among the relatives of the 36 Europeans who died. There is no question, even, of asking them to move from their houses. No question of asking them to make a snap decision—stay in Wankie or leave.
Some of the widows—all but two of the Europeans were married—have Indicated that they want to leave the closely-knit mining community. They find the memories too much to bear.
To help them in their moment of grief, a major airline company has offered $10 000 to help pay their fares back to Europe—and South Africa.
But there are others who have accepted that Wankie is home. They are women like Glenys Quirke, whose husband Eddie lived for Wankie. At first she wanted to leave ... go to Salisbury, or back to South Wales. Then she thought about it and decided to stay.
"Eddie loved this place, and didn't want to live anywhere else," she said. "When I thought about it I could see little point in moving. I have my memories of a happy marriage and they are what matter more than anything."
There are differing reports of how much the European bereaved will receive in the way of compensation. As with the Africans, no official amount has been specified. But depending upon the circumstances, how many children have been left fatherless, for instance, sums in the region of $30 000 have been quoted.
Then there is the matter of the President's Disaster Fund. So much money has been collected, both in Rhodesia and overseas, that no one has had the time to sit down and consider how it is going to be distributed.
End
