Qualla: Burngrange Mining Disaster

Burngrange Mining Disaster: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eight in the evening on Friday, 10 January 1947. Fifty-three men were at work underground at the Burngrange shale mine, west of Edinburgh, when an open acetylene cap lamp ignited a pocket of firedamp. The explosion was small. The fires it started were not. They spread rapidly through the workings, burning the timber supports, choking the galleries with smoke, and trapping fifteen miners in No. 3 Dook — the steepest of the underground inclines, the hardest to reach. David Brown, the overman on duty that night, made attempt after attempt to get back in to them. So did James McArthur, a miner who volunteered for the rescue team without being asked. By the time the fires were finally controlled four days later and a team could push past the burned area into No. 3 Dook, all fifteen were dead — killed not by the explosion but by afterdamp and fumes. Brown was awarded the Edward Medal. McArthur was awarded the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct. They had done everything that could be done.

Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Burngrange Mining Disaster: The Mine That Made Paraffin

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most British coal disasters are remembered as coal disasters, but Burngrange was something different — it was an oil-shale mine. The shale fields of West Lothian and Midlothian had been worked since the 1850s, when James 'Paraffin' Young pioneered the extraction of mineral oil fr...

Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Burngrange Mining Disaster: Three Attempts Into the Smoke

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. Brown descended the pit with a fireman and pushed in toward the men trapped beyond No. 3 Dook. The smoke was thick but at first not impassable, and they made progress as far as the junction of another heading. There the smoke thickened and they were forced back. Brown waited a fe...

Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Burngrange Mining Disaster: What Brown Asked For

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. The National Fire Service, despite the fact that fighting fires underground was not part of their mandate, sent a team. Two of them put on their one-hour Proto-breathing sets. Underground they met Brown, who pleaded for the use of those sets so that he and another trained member ...

Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Burngrange Mining Disaster: Four Days

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coldupnorth, CC BY-SA 4.0. The firefighting continued for four days. Not until the night of 13/14 January was it judged practicable to send a rescue team beyond the burned area. With one exception, the bodies of all fifteen men were found in No. 3 Dook. They had died of afterdamp — the toxic mixture of gas...

Image: Coldupnorth | CC BY-SA 4.0