Fire-damp

“ When a calm succeeds a storm, the pressure is unusually low, consequently the foul air imprisoned in the mineral of coal pits escapes more readily into the air, accompanied by a buzzing sound, which miners regard as prognosticating a storm or heavy rain. Accordingly, it is when the barometer is low that explosions of fire-damp are most common. ”

“ With between 85 per cent. and 89 per cent. of air, fire-damp assumed its most explosive form, but afterwards decreased in explosiveness, until with 94-1/4 per cent. of air it again simply ignited without explosion. With between 11 and 12 per cent. of fire-damp the mixture was most dangerous. Pure fire-damp itself, therefore, is not dangerous, so that when a small quantity enters the gauze which surrounds the Davy lamp, it simply burns with its characteristic blue flame, but at the same time gives the miner due notice of the danger which he was running. ”

“ To collect and publish a detailed account of the numerous and awful accidents which have occurred within the last few years, from the explosion of inflammable air, or fire-damp, in the coal mines of the North of England, would present a picture of the most appalling nature. ”

“ If the gas be copious, the flame elongates into a sharp spire, as well as the top. It is in general reckoned dangerous when the tip changes from the bluish-gray to a fine blue colour, accompanied with minute luminous points, which pass rapidly upwards through the flame and top. When the symptoms are manifestly dangerous, a sudden movement of the hands or body is liable to produce ignition by agitation of the fire-damp. ”

“ He may be ignorant that the proportions of admixture of fire-damp with ordinary air which are such as to cause explosion are, when the former is more than one fourth, and less than one sixteenth, of the quantity of the latter. ”

“ Happily it was always possible to keep up a fire, wood and turf peat was plentiful and could be had for the cutting and carrying, and though the smoke made their eyes tingle, perhaps it hindered the damp from hurting them, when all the walls wept, in spite of the reed mats which they had woven and hung over them. ”

“ While things are in this merry train, it has but too frequently happened that from some unforeseen cause, the ventilation has partially stagnated, allowing a quantity of the fire-damp to accumulate in one space to the explosive pitch ”

“ However tempting a smooth rock may look as a convenient spot on which a fire may be built, do not fail to spread a few shovels of sand, earth or clay on the stone as a fire bed, for the damp rock on becoming heated may generate steam and either expand with some violence or burst like a bomb-shell and scatter far and wide the fragments, even endangering the lives of those gathered around the fire. ”

“ An example has already been given of the way in which people have been saved from the effects of inundations in mines, others have been dug out when buried by the fall of roofs, but almost countless are the numbers who have perished from other causes, for if the first have destroyed their hundreds, the fire-damp in coal mines has proved the destruction of thousands. It was at one time considered right every night to provoke an explosion by lighting the fire-damp in order that the working stalls should be accessible next morning. ”

“ The whole presented a scene of the wildest alarm, confusion, and license. Vociferations, oaths, shrieks, and outcries of every description stunned the ear. Night was turned into day. The awful roaring of the flames was ever and anon broken by the thundering fall of some heavy roof. Flakes of fire were scattered far and wide by the driving wind, carrying destruction wherever they alighted, and spreading the conflagration on all sides, till it seemed like a vast wedge of fire driven into the heart of the city. ”

“ Blinded by smoke and flame, made frantic by the red death that was sweeping the forest, confused, terror-stricken, weakened by gas and fumes, the poor beasts had finally crowded together and perished under the onrushing wave of fire. ”

“ From the banks many charred remains of victims of flames and flood are plainly visible to the naked eye, as the retreating waters reluctantly give up their dead. Beneath almost every log or blackened beam a glistening skull or the blanched remnants of ribs or limbs mark all that remains of life's hopes and dreams.
Since ten o'clock last night the fire engines have been busy. Water has been constantly playing on the burning ruins. At times the fire seems almost extinguished, but fitful flames suddenly break out afresh in some new quarter, and again the water and flames wage fierce combat. ”

“ With a shock that shook the earth till it rocked and trembled under them, the pillar of smoke and fire towered aloft in the hush of the midnight, blasting and hurling upward, in thunder that pealed back from rock to rock, lifeless bodies, mangled limbs, smouldering timbers, loosened stones, dead men flung heavenward like leaves whirled by the wind, and iron torn up and bent like saplings in a storm, as the mass of the barricades quivered, oscillated, and fell with a mighty crash, while the night was red with the hot glare of the flame, and filled with the deafening din. ”

“ The air was filled with fiery particles, which floated even to the doorstep—while the crackling and roaring of the flames might have been heard at a great distance.
To reach the shore of the lake, we must pass through the burning swamp, and not a bird could pass over it with unscorched wings. The fierce wind drove the flames at the sides and back of the house up the clearing; and our passage to the road or to the forest, on the right and left, was entirely obstructed by a sea of flames. Our only ark of safety was the house, so long as it remained untouched by the fire. ”

“ Two or three men seize the nozzle of the great hose and rush with it into the burning [Pg 173] building to seek the heart of the fire. Smoke pours from the doors and windows in dense clouds, blinding and choking them until they gasp for breath. Water slops and spatters everywhere, steam rises from the blazing timbers, and the intense heat scorches and stifles them as they work. ”

“ The blinding effect of the dense smoke that filled the atmosphere, the suffocating smell of the burning mass of vegetable matter, and the lurid glare of the red flames that came on so rapidly, overpowered alike the horses and their riders: while the roaring of the fire—which sounded like a mighty rushing cataract—and the oppressive heat, seemed to confuse the senses, and destroy the vital powers of the more feeble and ill-mounted of the fugitives. ”

“ The hoarse roar of the coming flame stills the air, causing a dull sound, sometimes increasing and sometimes diminishing in intensity as the conflagration sweeps on or recedes. Occasionally a glimpse can be caught of a clump of trees surrounded by a belt of fire, but as yet untouched by the flames; then a narrow streak of fire curls round the stems, and in another instant the whole becomes one mass of gold-coloured fire; then up rises the column of smoke driven here and there by the breeze. It takes a thousand fantastic forms, spreads itself out, diminishes in an instant ”

“ Powder is not quicker; in an instant every thing is in a blaze. The flames, propagated by a strong wind, spread themselves from point to point, and present a heap of fire which no effort can extinguish. A sad spectator of so cruel a disaster, I hoped at least to save the distant buildings. My expectation was still deceived, and we had the misfortune to see the greatest part of our provisions consumed before our eyes. ”

“ The cold blast that forever drifted through these labyrinths chilled them, but brought no pure air from above; the floors, the walls, the roofs, were covered over with the foul deposits of damp vapors that forever hung around; the atmosphere was thick with impure exhalations and poisonous miasma; the dense smoke from the ever-burning torches might have mitigated the noxious gases, but it oppressed the dwellers here with its blinding and suffocating influence. ”

“ This solid flame blocks up the streets, piles itself inPg 234 heaps on the roofs and breaks through into the houses with the crashing tiles and the blazing rafters. The fire thus tumbles in from story to story, upon the pavement of the courts, where, accumulating like earth thrown in to fill a trench, it receives fresh fuel from the red and fiery flakes that slowly, fatally, keep showering down, falling, falling, without respite. ”

“ A huge fire burns in the centre of the building, and the smoke ascends in clouds through an opening in the roof, directly above, down which the snowflakes descend and hiss as they meet their death in the ruddy flames. ”

“ The clouds came creeping down the hills all around, as if to envelop us, and ended in heavy rain, which continued steadily pouring down all the afternoon and evening. As we had not even patrol-tents, we sat crouching round the miserable fires in our steaming cloaks, mingling the smoke of our pipes with the heavy wreaths from the damp wood fires, which, circling and eddying round, filled our eyes with tears, giving us altogether, with our dripping forage-caps and damp clothes, a ridiculously forlorn aspect. ”

“ Fire, when it occurs, is awfully destructive, their roofs, chimneys, and walls all wood, and that intended for fuel piled against the planks outside, probably for the sake of warmth, as the wind whistles through every cranny. ”

“ Against that curtain of blaze, strangely beautiful in its sinuous strength, I watch the black silhouettes of men running hither and thither like rats, gutting the houses, looting the stores, tearing the hearts out of the homes. The fire seems a great bird, and from its nest of furnace heat it spreads its flapping wings over the city. ”

“ At one time three portions of the city were burning at once, and all hope of checking the conflagration died in the hearts of men as the terrific volume of flame thundered and crackled, and hissed in sheets over their heads. The blinding smoke rolled heavenwards in a thick heavy mass; the flying embers were carried along for miles, and the brisk north-western wind brought the destroying flame to a thousand households. Men and women stood paralyzed in the streets, fearing the worst and hoping against hope. ”

“ Do you see that perpendicular, broken line of light, occasionally flashing out from the smoke, and extending upward to a height that no ground fire ever reached? That is your king pine in a blaze from bottom to top. Hark! why, I can hear it roaring clear here, like a distant hurricane. It must be a prodigious hot fire to make all that show and noise.”
“Can it endanger our buildings?” asked Claud, in alarm. ”

“ During one of its wilder displays the fire rolled forward, an enormous horizontal whirl of flame, and then, with thunder and roar, the molten flames swept upward into a wall of fire; this tore to pieces, collapsed, and fell forward in fiery disappearing clouds. With amazing quickness the splendid hanging garden on the terraced heights was crushed and blackened. By my promontory went this magnificent zigzag surging front of flame, blowing the heavens full of sparks and smoke and flinging enormous fiery rockets. ”

“ The wind had been steadily increasing in violence since the fire started and now was blowing almost a gale. It whipped the waves into foam and whistled and shrieked through the rigging. The fire, fanned by the breeze, now roared menacingly while its volume increased steadily. ”

“ I think, after seeing the immense flame produced by such a small amount of fine saw and sand-paper dust, you will no longer wonder at the rapid spread of flames in furniture and similar factories. You know it is practically impossible to put out a fire after any headway is attained in these establishments; the draught produced will blow all the dust from walls and rafters into the air, and the building in an instant is a mass of flame. ”

“ The fire was advancing rapidly and the heat was terrific. Choking and gasping in the stinging resinous smoke, the men strove in frenzy of haste to complete the fire-break before the flames should reach them. ”

“ There's a place, far away from here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and then there's nothing but a smell. ”

“ Mountains of flame frequently burst away from the mass of burning buildings and floated upward for a few moments, and the tallow and tar which flowed out of the warehouses floated away blazing with the tide and set the shipping on fire, so that land and water alike seemed to be involved in one huge terrific conflagration. ”

“ The flame gathers into a point; and, at the more advanced part of the curvature, the force and blaze is terrible. A thousand tongues of fire shoot up into the density, and immediately disappear. Who now so venturous as to dash headlong through the hottest flame, and to recover from beneath the choking night his former position? There goes—a hat—a cap—a bonnet! They have taken up their position in the pathway of the devouring flood of fire—and who so brave, so daring, as to extricate his own property from instant destruction? ”

“ Outside the rain still fell in torrents; the tumult of the gush from the gutter hard by gave intimations of great volume of overflow. At long intervals a drop fell hissing down the chimney on the coals where the fire had burned to a white heat. ”

“ Huge billows of fire would roll over each other, and great waves of fiery flame would dash against each other and leap high in the air like the waves of the sea during a violent storm. On the crest of these waves I could see human beings rise, but soon to be carried down again to the lowest depth of this awful lake of fire. ”

“ Giant walls fell crumbling at their feet, and the fire flashed and the flames flickered on the heaps of debris which they encountered on the sideways of their journey. Not a soul could be seen in the streets. ”

“ Fire, however, destroys rapidly. In a short time the flames sank—became weak and flickering—by and by, they shot out only in fits—the crackling of the timbers died away—the surrounding darkness deepened—and, ere long, the faint light was overpowered by the thick volumes of smoke that rose from the ruins of the house and its murdered inhabitants. ”