Milestone tinged with sadness for Mosside Mine Disaster survivor

Oct 7 2009 by Ian Bunting, Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser

Milestone tinged with sadness for pit disaster survivor John

“A CALMNESS came over the place and the next thing you knew a wall of water came crashing towards us. Nothing could escape its path.”

That is the terrifying description given by the last survivor of Airdrie’s Mosside Mine Disaster, John Young, about the events that befell him and his friends that fateful day.

John, who resides in Rawyards House Nursing Home, has just celebrated his 90th birthday and is eager to honour the memory of those who perished in the tragedy 70 years ago.

On Friday, September 22, 1939, a section of the old Kippsbyre Number 6 pit was suddenly breached after a rush of water in the mine, which was hundreds of feet below the surface.

John was just 19 years of age at the time and put the warning out to all of his workmates. He said: “As soon as I saw what was happening I said to everyone that they’d better forget what they were doing and get out of there.

“I was very lucky because of the position I was in that I was able to get out.”

John was one of five men to escape, along with Andrew Mitchell, brothers John and Joseph Lynch and James Clark, but three of his friends were trapped.

Alexander Kinnaird, Thomas Lang and John’s best friend James Walker’s bodies were never found and John spoke of the anxious wait that friends and relatives had to discover what had happened to the trio.

He said: “We sat for many nights waiting for word of Alexander, Thomas and James’s fate but, despite a large-scale search that lasted five days where they pumped the water out of the mine, they were never found.

“They are still down there now.”

A cairn was erected in 1985 to commemorate the disaster and the memory of the three miners. John was at the dedication ceremony but was unhappy at how long it had taken for this monument to appear.

He said: “It took 46 years for them to put up this cairn and by then the men’s families were dead.

“I want to make sure that these three men are never forgotten, as they were great men.

“I will never forget that day, and Alexander, Thomas and James will always be in my thoughts.”

John has four children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren and his family joined him in his special 90th birthday celebrations.

His daughter Nancy said: “My dad was lucky and I don’t known how he survived.

“We are delighted he is with us today and we all had a great time on his birthday.”