Word: pitheads
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sixth day after the bump, Springhill had just about given up hope for 69 men still underground in North America's deepest mine. Exhausted rescuers still hacked through rubble at a painful 1 ft. per hour, but the women stopped coming to the pithead. Some families bought cemetery plots for their men. The newsmen left for other stories, and the coal-grimed town nursed its grief behind closed doors, wondering dully what it would do now that DOSCO (Dominion Steel & Coal Corp., Ltd., subsidiary of A. V. Roe Canada Ltd.) planned to close Springhill's last mine...
...pithead, a reporter shouted the news to a local man climbing out of his car. He stared blankly, sobbed "Oh my God" and sped off to town. Within minutes, doors slammed, feet echoed swiftly on the pavement, and once more Springhill raced to the pithead and waited...
Hope for the remaining 48 miners still missing rose briefly, then ebbed as the DOSCO rescue director announced that there was really no chance. The digging went on. At 4:45 a.m. on the ninth day, a miner 12,600 ft. from the pithead heard scratchings. "It sounded like a cat," he said. "I couldn't believe my ears." Again there was a frantic scrambling through 12 ft. of loose debris, and two hours, 40 minutes later seven more survivors began to come out. At week's end, 29 were still missing...
...second day as French Premier, Felix Gaillard continues to face some disturbing problems. France has been without a government for thirty-six days, during which time pithead coal prices have risen 6.5 per cent, the import tax has risen 20 per cent, and the franc's value has fallen 20 per cent. To combat the falling franc and the rising Algerian, fresh and dynamic leadership is needed. If the following proposals to M. Gaillard are not dynamic, they are, at least, original...
...simple story is told without heroics or false sentiment. It is mostly a movie of waiting and of silences at the pithead and in the pit as the rescuers work their way toward the trapped men. "There's nothing to do but wait," says one miner's wife stoically. Except for an occasional Scottish song, the picture has no musical score-only the constant sounds of ticking clocks, dripping water and heavy breathing...