Safety Failure

Thursday, 17.--I inquired into a signal instance of Providence. When a coalpit runs far under the ground it is customary here to build a partition wall, nearly from the shaft to within three or four yards of the end, in order to make the air circulate; it then moves down one side of the wall, turns at the end, and then moves briskly up on the other side. In a pit two miles from the town, which ran full four hundred yards under the ground and had been long neglected, several parts of this wall were fallen down. Four men were sent down to repair it. They were about three hundred yards from the shaft, when the foul air took fire. In a moment it tore down the wall from end to end; and, burning on till it came to the shaft, it then burst and went off like a large cannon.

The Journal of John Wesley