Coordinates: 53°42′54″N 1°30′18″W / 53.715°N 1.505°W The Lofthouse Colliery disaster was a mining accident which took place in Lofthouse Gate, West Yorkshire, England in 1973.
On March 21, 1973 miners at Lofthouse, West Yorkshire Colliery were working at a coal face which unknown to them was close to some 19th century mine workings which had become flooded. There was a sudden rush of water into the mine, most miners in the area fled to safety but it was discovered than seven men were missing. It was considered theoretically possible that they had made it to an air pocket.
For six days strenuous and increasingly desperate efforts were made to reach them. At one point the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, visited the rescue operation. Eventually rescuers made it to the site of the accident, there was a small air pocket but nobody in it. Only one of the bodies, that of Charles Cotton, was recovered.
The second part of the TV drama The Price of Coal was loosely based on the disaster.
   | BBC on the disaster - BBC - Bradford and West Yorkshire - A Sense of Place - The Lofthouse Colliery Disaster |
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