On the morning of August 8, 1956, 274 people were working in the Bois du Cazier colliery near Charleroi, in the Hainaut province of Belgium.

Only twelve came out alive.

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At eight o’clock in the morning, a malfunctioning shaft elevator 975 metres below the ground crashed, hitting an oil conduit and high-voltage electrical lines, and started the chain of events leading to the inferno. The elevator blocked the flow of fresh air. There was an electrical explosion which caused a massive fire.

Rescue operations were extremely difficult. Experts were brought in from the Ruhr. Rescuers could not go down the existing shaft, which was billowing smoke, and approached the scene via a new shaft, which was being built.

They had to demolish a wall at the bottom, and were immediately faced with the horror of the first victims. Some miners had managed to find refuge from the fire, but died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

As the corpses were brought to the surface, hundreds of relatives waited in silence and fear.

It was too late for the dead, but there was still a glimmer of hope that miners below the level of the fire might have survived.

The scale of the disaster was completely out of proportion with the rescue measures available. The rescuers felt powerless, but had to keep going. It took two weeks to reach the next level down, at 1035 metres. But the words a rescuer said to the waiting relatives when he emerged were ‘Tutti cadaveri’ – all corpses.

Many miners were immigrants. After the war, when prisoners of war could no longer be used as mineworkers, Belgium lured people from poor regions of other countries, particularly Italy, with promises of housing, schooling for their children, and a better life. Many were young men in their teens. Some travelled four days by train or bus, and when they arrived, they found that their lodgings were the POW barracks. They lived and worked in pitiful conditions. They were beasts of burden. It was coal that mattered, not people. If they did not produce the stipulated quota of coal, they were not paid. Over a hundred and fifty miners died each year, many from silicosis. Equipment was antiquated and there was little maintenance.

In the Bois du Cazier, the worst industrial accident in Belgium’s history, 136 Italians died, along with 95 Belgians, eight Poles, six Greeks, five Germans, five Frenchmen, three Hungarians, one Englishman, one Dutchman, one Russian and one Ukrainian.

There was a trial in 1959, at which everyone was acquitted. Following an appeal in 1961, the mine manager received a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of the equivalent of fifty pounds. Politicians were never questioned.

Fortunately, after Marcinelle, standards were improved and safety measures were put in place. The mine was reopened in April 1957, and closed for good in 1965. The museum that stands in the old colliery is a grim reminder of the accident, and what it represents in European industrial history.