Lofthouse Colliery disaster

The Lofthouse Colliery disaster was a mining accident in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on Wednesday 21 March 1973, in which seven mine workers died when workings flooded.
Lofthouse Colliery was in Lofthouse Gate, close to Outwood in the Stanley Urban District, where many of the colliers lived. The site is now in the City of Wakefield. . A new coalface was excavated too close to an abandoned flooded 19th-century mineshaft. The sudden inrush of three million imperial gallons of water trapped seven mine workers 750 feet below ground. A six-day rescue operation succeeded in recovering only one body, that of Charles Cotton. The location of the flooded shaft was known to National Coal Board surveyors but they had not believed it to be as deep as the modern workings. British Geological Survey records indicated that the flooded shaft did descend to the same depth but the NCB neglected to check these records.

Wikipedia