Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Usage examples of "fire-damp".
His coarse, black shirt bulged on the right side over the mound of three broken ribs that had never been set after an explosion of fire-damp had hurled him against a coal car.
When the workman was assailed suddenly by what we now call fire-damp, which hurled him and his companions right and left upon the dark rocks, scorching, burning, and killing, those who survived were not likely to question the existence of the mine fiend hence arose the superstition - now probably quite extinct - of basilisks in the mines, which destroyed with their terrible gaze.