On the 21st of march 1973 3.5 million gallons of water and sludge poured in to Lofthouse Colliery n was this concrete wall withear Wakefield. This is my earliest news memory and is etched in to my memory more deeply than The Ripper, the Black Panther and Lesley Whittles hanging in the sewers. 7 men were trapped underground. Only one body was found. Tony Banks was underground on the night of the disaster, 'We were in the middle of the coal face with the machine team and at about 2.30 am there was a sudden surge of wind and everything went quiet. It was as if someone had turned your mind off then it all came back to normal, the wind started blowing back in your face and the clanging of machinery, it was about 4.30 when I got back to surface'.
I remember the news broadcasting possibilities of how the lost men were caught in an air bubble underground. Even as an 8 year old it seemed futile.
The rescue attempts were all in vain, there was no chance for those men. The men at Lofthouse were never the same again, 'I'll never forget I used to go and inspect the roadways and you used to take a man with you so you werent on your own but none of them would come up there. There was this concrete wall with this big cross painted on it in white it said RIP.'
Tony remembers that just six weeks after the disaster, water was coming through the roof of the pit. 'I thought , whata job, water coming down and we're drilling for over a week', but it was just some water that had got in to the strata. 'After that rule came out that we had to drill ahead if we were going towards any old workings. I think another lesson learned was to check old chaps who knew the area.'
It is 36 years since 7 miners were trapped in Lofthouse Colliery when the seam they were working on became flooded. A rescue mission went on for 6 days that I followed on ;Look North' after school but 6 bodies were left buried, down there.
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