The Deep Dark (14 page)

Kitchen and Anderson finished their meal and left the station for their working area up above the drift. Just as they picked up where they had left off, a motorman alerted them about the fire. Anderson acknowledged some smoke down the drift. But Kitchen, up in the raise, couldn't see any, and was perturbed about having to stop. He didn't think a little smoke was any big deal, but he climbed down anyway. When the pair got to the drift, a thickening layer of smoke met them like a wall.

In a minute's time, Delmar Kitchen went from the raise, with its whiz-bang and clear air, to a faint wisp of smoke, to a tornado that sucked him deep inside. He couldn't see Anderson as he staggered forward, gagging and unsure where he was going. Somehow he found an open air door, behind which was a fan, and just as quickly as he moved inside, the smoke thinned. Visibility improved to about five or ten feet. He found a water line, and doused his face and mouth. Thankfully, Anderson had been right behind him. The water brought instant relief. Kitchen thought maybe the water had delivered oxygen to his body. The air behind them was choked with smoke. There was nowhere else to go but forward. It was the only way out.

They followed the mine rails and traced the line of overhead lights, each lone bulb wrapped in a protective wire cage, a row of illuminated beehives. Farther down was the faintest outline of the station, buried under a mantle of smoke. It reminded Kitchen of another station fire, less than a year before, when a pump had burned up and sent ashy smoke through the mine. It had been hard to breathe, but the mine wasn't evacuated. Men returned to their working areas and waited until the ventilation system sucked out the smoke.

This, Kitchen knew, was far worse. There was much more smoke and it wasn't going anywhere.

O
N THE WAY OUT TO THE
J
EWELL,
J
ACK
H
ARRIS AND
K
EITH
B
REAZEAL
came upon a leaking air door on a cross-drift to old country intersecting with 3100. A sheet of smoke seeped under the door, arcing and blending with fresh air. The pair found a broken shovel and moved quickly to seal the door. They joked about the fine job they did with the crummy shovel. A few yards farther down was another failing air door. It was framed with rotten timbers shot through with a helter-skelter lattice of holes. Harris scratched his head. This one was beyond patching. They'd need fifty yards of burlap and a stack of lumber. He knew his Big Creek neighbor Gene Johnson could use more time to evacuate, but he and Breazeal were stymied. By the time it got really bad, Harris figured, all the men would be out anyhow.

A
BOUT NOON,
M
AY
2

Jewell Shaft

C
AGE TENDER
K
ENNY
W
ILBUR FROZE.
O
N 3700 BY THE
J
EWELL,
foreman Harvey Dionne and shifter Paul Johnson—no relation to foreman Gene—were on the phone with the surface and lower levels, talking out what could be done to get more men out. Their voices were sharp and loud, echoing off the rock walls before fading into the heart of the mine. Tributaries of sweat ran down Dionne's suddenly very haggard face.
Something big was happening.
Dionne couldn't decipher word for word all that was being said as men throughout the mine tried to talk over each other. The only voice that cut through the chatter belonged to Bob Scanlan. The hoistman on 10-Shaft said they were sending men up right then.

Dionne passed the phone to Johnson so he could try making sense of the overlapping dialog. Dionne needed a moment. From what he'd seen when he peered over the bulkhead and from what he knew about Sunshine's ventilation system, the fire was in all probability burning somewhere above 4800. Smoke-contaminated air could be leaking to the lower levels through the old workings that cut every which way through the mine. Some had been sealed off in the most rudimentary fashion.

“You know,” he said to Wilbur, “we should pull off them laggings over 12-Shaft to get some fresh air to 4800.”

Wilbur nodded. Despite its name, at forty-eight inches across, 12-Shaft was really only a borehole. In time, the company intended to widen it and build another shaft to take some of the burden off 10-Shaft. Its location was good. It was within a thousand feet west of the Jewell. When 12-Shaft was timbered out, it would provide access to a substantial new ore body to the east. It would also serve as a ventilation conduit and an additional escape manway.

At one time, mine management had considered extending the Jewell down to 4800, but the plan had been abandoned because the Jewell double-drum was already at capacity. The chippy could go deeper, to 4000, but it was only a service hoist for men and equipment. The company needed to get muck out. A new borehole was the only solution on which management, geologists, and engineers could agree. Dionne led the project, which had been completed only a week before. To keep wayward debris from falling through the 1,100-foot drop and injuring someone, Dionne's crew had sealed the opening with an improvised cover.

Wilbur took a self-rescuer and vanished down the drift. The air was reasonably clear, with only a few wispy patches of hazy smoke. In minutes he'd gone from the confines of a drift to an enormous room with three stories of overhead space and foot-wide belts of steel fastened to walls with five-foot rock bolts. Wilbur wanted to get the lagging cover off and get out fast. He grabbed frantically at the cover, but a piece of wood refused to budge. It was caught on the craggy rim of the hole, a mouth ready to swallow. Wilbur, a compact man only five feet four inches tall, yanked again,
hard,
and teetered at the edge. He started to slip. His lamp swung wildly, swiping the ribs of the drift with a spray of light. He was going down. He stiffened his arms and pushed back with everything he had; and just as quickly as he lost it, he regained his balance.

Holy smokes, that was close,
he thought.
Oh, take it easy.

It flashed through his mind that if he'd fallen, there'd be nothing left of him. And with all the confusion in the burning mine, there'd be no one to know what had happened to him.

He looked down the rough circumference of the borehole into perfect gloom. A warm breath from the enormous emptiness of the mine blew over his face, and was sucked into the chasm. Kenny Wilbur hoped someone down there could get the fresh air.

12:15
P.M.,
M
AY
2
3100 Level

L
AUNHARDT AND
H
AWKINS WERE BELLED DOWN TO 3100, WHERE
they found the McCaa oxygen packs stacked and waiting for them. A group of miners who'd escaped their working areas stood around on the station, a few in obvious shock. Some hacked up mucus. Others still held their self-rescuers. A couple wanted to help.

“Where are you going with the helmets?” someone asked.

“I'm taking them back to 10-Shaft,” Launhardt said.

“I'm going with you.”

The voice belonged to veteran shaft man Jim Zingler. Nipper Don Beehner, who had been killing time with cage tender Kenny Wilbur when the fire was discovered, also volunteered. Both men had been trained in mine rescue and the use of the McCaa.

Launhardt still didn't know how four men would get all of those oxygen packs back to where Gene Johnson and the others were waiting. They were heavy, about forty-two pounds each. It would be beyond their endurance to carry all ten a mile to 10-Shaft. Launhardt had a lanky build, but he was strong, and with the concern and fear mixing in his bloodstream, he was ready to carry whatever he had to. Hawkins, Zingler, and Beehner were ready, too. Each wore a unit on his back and carried one in his arms, the extra weight pounding their rubber soles a half-inch into the muddy floor.

We're not going to make it,
Launhardt thought, just as a headlight appeared.

“Look!” Hawkins said.

A motor pulling a couple of muck cars and a timber car, each packed with hacking and nauseated miners, edged toward the station. When it stopped and the men got off, Launhardt's crew loaded the helmets and took off. Hawkins ran the motor, with Beehner climbing onto the back end and Zingler on the timber truck. Launhardt took the lead in the front car. About a quarter of a mile out, he moved his head back and forth, streaking his light from over the blasted-out drift. Hawkins stopped the motor.

“Look,” Launhardt said, “those guys told us the smoke was really bad past the timber station. Let's put on the apparatus here, where the air is still clear.”

They checked their air hoses and face masks, ensuring that everything was snug and in order. The seal around a man's face was as important as a good oxygen hose; a leak could kill a man faster than getting no oxygen at all.

Hawkins put the motor into gear. None aboard could be sure what they would find, but each knew they could be the last chance for some to survive. The sooner they reached the men, the better their chances. But a moment later it was as if someone had shut off the lights. It was a wall of smoke, astonishingly thick; a solid darkness emptied onto the drift and consumed everything behind it. It appeared that the smoke was coming from a crosscut intersecting with the drift near 5-Shaft.

Launhardt signaled again and Hawkins stopped the motor.

“There's heavy smoke here,” he called out through his face mask. He turned his attention to his flame safety lamp and gas detector. “I'll check it out.” It was like nothing Launhardt had ever seen. It was nearly tarpaper black. Wood smoke, he knew, was often a brownish hue.
What's burning down here?

12:16
P.M.,
M
AY
2
4400 Level

T
HE NORTH COMPARTMENT OF 10-
S
HAFT
'
S DOUBLE DRUM STOPPED
at 4400 and picked up nine men, including shaft repairman Robert Barker and welder Jack Reichert, the ex–police chief. A minute later it stopped on 3700. The cage's movements were recorded in the hoist room by a device called a tattletale. Like the jagged lines of a seismic scale, a needle marked a sheet of paper whenever the north or south compartment stopped or started. It also logged how long a cage paused on a particular level.

12:20
P.M.,
M
AY
2
5000 Level

F
ORMER
H
OMESTAKE GOLD MINERS
H
OWARD
M
ARKVE AND
B
OB
Follette were working off 10-Shaft at 10 stope. Markve was up 125 feet over track level, drilling and preparing to blast, when Duane Stephens, nineteen, came and flashed his light. Markve climbed down to learn about the fire and the evacuation. He noticed some smoke, but remained unconcerned. He worked on repairing a bad jackleg for a few minutes before taking off and riding a bucket down on the timber slide to join Follette, who had already climbed down to track level.

Through the smoky haze, the motor's headlamp appeared deep yellow. The color was curious. Markve put the jackleg in need of repair on the back of the motor. The station was 1,500 feet down the drift.

12:21
P.M.,
M
AY
2

4400 Level

T
IMBERS DECAYED QUICKLY IN
S
UNSHINE
'
S HOT, MOIST ENVIRONMENT
, and crews were forever replacing disintegrating wood and hauling it off to abandoned stopes as gob, or filler. The day smoke poured through the mine, twelve-by-twelve timbers and steel plates as solid as the hull plating of a Navy frigate were in the midst of being bolted in place for a new station floor on 4400. Bill Mitchell brooded over the possibility that welders working on the job had inadvertently touched off a fire. As Mitchell waited on the station for the guys on the east side of the drift to arrive, he began to believe the fire was somewhere on their level. The smoke was so damn intense, its source couldn't be far. Could a hot bolt have fallen somewhere from the station? Other miners on 4400 searched, but failed to turn up anything. Sinuses were running and eyes were burning, yet the seventeen men clustered on the smoke-filled station stayed remarkably calm. The wait seemed long, and the smoke sent nearly every man into a coughing fit—some to the point of retching.

Mitchell soaked his shirt in water and wrapped the sopping garment around his face. At the same time, his partner, Bob Waldvogel, was working his asthma inhaler with unmitigated ferocity. Mitchell, who had no respiratory problems, could barely fill his lungs without gagging. The deep puffs from the little cylinders Waldvogel clutched seemed to provide little relief. But it was hard to tell just how badly he was doing. It was taxing to see much of anything at all. When the double-drum cage finally stopped at the station, Mitchell, Waldvogel, and the rest lined up. Several men from another level were already packed into the rear.

“Oh, I forgot my dinner bucket!”

It was Waldvogel. He could be forgetful. He had even earned a nickname in younger days as a Bunker Hill drift miner. Miners there called him Dumb-dumb.

Mitchell understood the real significance of the declaration. Waldvogel wasn't fretting over leftovers. He needed his bucket because a moment before the cage came, he stashed his inhalers inside and set his bucket on the floor.

“No problem. I'll get it,” Mitchell said, stepping from the cage and disappearing behind the black camouflage of smoke. Because he could hardly see, Mitchell crouched low on his knees and felt around where they had been waiting. He found his partner's dinner bucket and returned to the cage. By then the conveyance was full. Mitchell figured he'd catch up with Waldvogel on the train to the Jewell.

“Bob, I got your bucket,” he called out. “See you on thirty-seven.”

The cage disappeared, and a tear in the smoke curtain momentarily revealed that Mitchell and Ed “Speedy” Gonzalez were the only men left from the original group. Randy Peterson had joined them, having jumped off the cage with shaft boss Dusty Rhoads. As they stood in the rapidly swelling smoke, Rhoads outright rejected the suggestion that a hot bolt from his shaft crew had touched off a fire.
It wasn't goddamn possible.
No one could find the fire anyway. Only smoke. And it came fast. Cage tender Randy Peterson was the first to realize he was dying. It was as though the smoke had gone solid, lodged in his throat, and created a barrier that good air could not penetrate. Hacking up a cork of mucus could get him breathing, if only there was something to breathe. Peterson left the station for the compressed-air line that ran an air tugger, a conveyance used to load heavy timbers onto the cage. As quickly as he could, he knocked the nut loose that held the air line and released a breeze over his face. Seeing this, others followed his lead. The force of the blowing air peeled off the smoky layer and gave instant relief. It would have been even better had Peterson been able to suppress the heavy coughing that sought to clear his lungs. He was worried.