The fire in the shafts
On Saturday, 13 November 1909, nearly five hundred men and boys were underground at the St. Paul Coal Company’s Mine No. 2 in Cherry, Illinois. Electrical lighting in the second vein had failed days earlier. Open torch flames burned in iron torches hung from timbers to light the mule car tracks. Around 1:30 in the afternoon, dripping kerosene from a torch ignited a cart loaded with baled hay meant for the subterranean mule stables.
Workers pushed the burning cart toward the hoist shaft rather than away, attempting to send it to the surface. Strong draft air caught the flames and swept fire up the wooden shaft lining. Twelve local volunteers made six descents in the hoisting cage to pull men out before a communication failure trapped the cage on the seventh drop, burning all twelve rescuers to death.
The Chicago deployment
State authorities realized the mine was an uncontrolled inferno choked with black damp (carbon dioxide and nitrogen) and white damp (carbon monoxide). With local apparatus exhausted and shafts sealed with sand to smother the blaze, an urgent appeal reached Chicago.
Fire Marshal James J. Horan commandeered a special train, departing Chicago with eleven veteran firefighters, high-pressure chemical lines, heavy deluge hose, and advanced Draeger oxygen breathing helmets. Horan arrived in Cherry on 15 November and assumed direction of the subterranean extinguishing operation.
Equipped with the oxygen helmets — which scrubbed exhaled air through caustic potash and supplied pure oxygen from steel cylinders — Horan’s Chicago squad made repeated descents into the gas-filled galleries where unprotected men collapsed within seconds. The squad pumped hundreds of gallons of water per minute directly into the burning coal faces and unsealed blocked airshafts.
The rescue of the twenty-one
On Saturday, 20 November 1909 — seven full days after the fire began — a rescue team broke through into a remote drift in the first vein. Twenty-one miners, led by George Eddy and Walter Waite, had barricaded themselves behind a wall of coal, chalk, and mud to seal out the gas, subsisting on seepage water dripping from the roof and oil from their headlamps.
Horan’s men brought the survivors to the surface in the hoisting cage. One miner died shortly after rescue; twenty survived. The remaining two hundred fifty-nine men and boys in the mine perished from suffocation and fire.
Safety legacy
The Cherry disaster stands as the third-deadliest coal mine disaster in American history. It forced fundamental changes in industrial safety law:
- Mandatory firefighting equipment: Illinois enacted statutes requiring underground water supply systems, automatic sprinkler heads at shaft bottoms, and fireproof stables.
- Mine communication: The state mandated underground telephone and gong signaling systems to eliminate hoist-cage communication failures.
- Breathing apparatus & rescue stations: The state created three permanent mine rescue stations equipped with oxygen helmets modeled on the Chicago squad’s gear.
- Workmen's Compensation: The economic devastation of hundreds of widows and orphans in Cherry catalyzed the passage of the 1911 Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act.
Sources
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Report on the Cherry Mine Disaster
State of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics · Springfield: Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers, 1910. pp. 46–49. Official report on the Chicago Fire Department deployment.
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Horan Battles Cherry Mine Fire
Chicago Tribune · 16 November 1909, p. 1. Reporting on Chief Horan’s arrival by special train with oxygen helmet crews.
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1909 Cherry Mine disaster
Wikipedia · Comprehensive overview of the fire, shaft geometry, and civic aftermath.