The Westray Mine was a Canadian coal mineinPlymouth, Nova Scotia, which was the site of a methane explosion in 1992 which killed 26 miners.
Pictou County, home to the Foord coal seam, one of the richest on the North American continent, has been home to the coal mining industry since industrialization in the 1800s.
Following the closure of the last working mine in the 1970s, Pictou County's hopes for a mining renaissance were revived with the announcement of a proposed mine in the region in the late 1980s. The timing was perfect, politically, since the region had elected a fledgling leader of the federal opposition, Brian Mulroney, in a 1983 by-electioninCentral Nova. Following the election of a federal Conservative-led government, Elmer MacKay became a Tory political heavyweight in the riding. Provincially, the area was also home to Conservative premier Donald Cameron. Money was made available to Toronto company Curragh Resources for establishing a mine, as well as building an extension to a railway line and custom-built railcars (to be constructed in nearby Trenton). The mine would feed coal to a local Nova Scotia Power Company generating station which was a provincial Crown corporation at the time.
OnSeptember 11, 1991 the mine was opened to great local fanfare but immediately problems began to surface. Accusations were made by union members of company cutbacks in safety training and equipment and of negligent and outright criminal behaviour toward safety inspections. Miners complained about working in deep coal dust and on March 9, 1992 only 2 months before the disaster, a local union official stated in a safety report:
On Saturday, May 9, 1992, a methane gas explosion at 5:18 a.m. ADT killed 26 miners.
In the aftermath of the explosion, Canadian and international media coverage descended upon the tiny hamlet of Plymouth and the nearby towns of New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville and Trenton. Coverage gripped Canadians for several days as teams of draegerman (mine rescuers) searched the debris-strewn depths of the mine for survivors.
Over the next several days, media reported non-stop from a community centre located across the street from the mine while rescue teams encountered extremely hazardous conditions underground. The bodies of 15 miners were discovered and afterward the search and rescue was changed to a search and recovery operation. After underground conditions worsened, the decision was made to abandon recovery efforts, entombing the bodies of 11 miners at the depths of the mine. Several days later RCMP investigators re-entered the mine with a draeger team to gather evidence for criminal prosecution but they did not enter the "southwest main" shaft where the remaining miners' bodies were located, again due to hazardous conditions.
117 miners who were not working on shift at the time were given 12-weeks severance pay. The company was charged with 52 non-criminal counts of operating an unsafe mine but in 1993 the company went bankrupt and charges never made it to court. The 2 mine managers were charged criminally but charges were stayed on account of lack of evidence.
The Nova Scotia provincial government conducted a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Westray Mine and the safety issues resulting from the explosion. The report submitted in 1998 recommended a sweeping overhaul of all provincial labour and mining laws which were mostly acted upon. Unfortunately the federal government has yet to address some of the more serious questions arising from Westray in new legislation.
Today a memorial sits in a park in nearby New Glasgow at the approximate location above ground where the remaining 11 miners are trapped. The memorial will always be there in rembrance of those who died there. The former mine site was razed in 1998 with the most visible reminder of the tragedy, the two 15-storey blue concrete coal storage silos, being imploded on November 27, 1998. The damaged mine shaft had been permanently sealed following the decision to abort further recovery attempts in May 1992 and after investigations were completed.
