The Deep Dark (46 page)

Donald Mitchell of the USBM responded to the British report and conducted his own tests at the Bureau's test mine in Brewster, Pennsylvania. Little, if anything, was relayed to the industry, but Mitchell's test results indicated that the foam was in fact flammable, even in a strong air current. He also confirmed Wilde's findings that the product burned with such intensity that once ignited, it was difficult to extinguish. And yet nothing in USBM literature indicated mining companies should remove what was sprayed into mines and railway tunnels. Even more surprisingly, polyurethane foam continued to be promoted and used.

Almost a decade after the British banned the foam, American mines still used it. For Sunshine, it was viewed as a timesaving and cost-effective way to stop leakage and channel airflow in a mine's ventilation system that was becoming increasingly deeper and more difficult to manage.

In 1966 the USBM's own publication,
Fire Hazards of Urethane Foam in Mines,
said:

“After two years of research on sealants and coatings, the Bureau of Mines published a report on urethane foam. Fire hazard from foam exists if flame propagates beyond the ignition source or penetrates the foam. . . . Foam on the ribs and adjoining roof presents a fire hazard. . . . Flame propagated in all tests with foam on the ribs and across the roof.”

Launhardt was flabbergasted. How could the USBM ignore what was so patently obvious? The research in England was incontrovertible, and the USBM's own findings backed it up. Why was the information dismissed? Why hadn't Donald Mitchell heeded his own concerns? Even in the piss ditch, down low from the test inferno, Mitchell's hair and eyebrows were singed. Why hadn't the government called for the removal of all underground foam? And why, during the rescue and recovery effort in May 1972, had USBM crews allowed the use of gallons of spray foam to seal the leaky drifts?

The foam had seemed so innocuous that Launhardt never paid it any mind. It sprayed on a creamy white, but in time the dust and grime of the mine coated it and it looked like the mud of a wasp nest—a bubbly form wrapping timbers and rocks and bulkheads in a smothering sheath of hardening goop. Launhardt came to believe the benign miracle insulator was a killer. He knew that it didn't take a lot of heat to get it to burn, and once it started, it burned like solid gasoline. Had the foam not been sprayed all over 3400, Sunshine's safety engineer believed, the fire would not have played out as it did the morning of May 2. What was there to burn, anyway? The marine plywood was as soggy as a rowboat at the bottom of a lake. The hot, wet mine took its toll on timbers all the time—which was why timber-repair crews were among the busiest crews. Launhardt dismissed the Bureau's theories that the crew cutting rock bolts with acetylene torches had hauled off for lunch around 11:00 a.m., leaving behind chunks of hot steel to rest against the bulkhead. Maybe careless, maybe stupid, but it shouldn't have been a big concern in any case because the timbers were wet there and the men had been told that the foam didn't burn. Had it not been for the foam, nothing would have come of it whether it was an errant cigarette or a hot rock bolt. And he knew it couldn't have happened that fast. If the foam hadn't been there and it was a small wood fire—all fires start out small—it would have smoldered a little and the smoke would have alerted someone before things got so out of hand. The fire just wouldn't have flashed to consume an entire bulkhead in less than a minute.

Launhardt was also bothered by USBM ventilation inspections in the fall of 1971 and a little more than a week before the fire. Both times the Bureau's experts passed through the polyurethane-foam-sprayed airways. No one could have missed the massive amounts of foam, it was so pervasive and obvious. And at the time the Bureau knew that the foam was a potential fire hazard. Instead of informing Sunshine that it ought to scrape that toxic foam out of there, they didn't even remark on it.

It was, of course, a combination of factors that led to the disaster. Without the short circuit of the ventilation system, most of the combustion by-products from the burning polyurethane foam would have gone harmlessly to the surface. But it was the velocity of the fire and the magnitude of toxins in its smoke that were so crucial to understanding what happened on May 2. Many, including Launhardt, believed—as subsequent tests concluded—that polyurethane foam acted as an accelerant akin to solid gasoline, which led to rapid combustion. That, in turn, gave rise to the torrent of smoke and deadly gases, the likes of which had never been seen before. The scenario was what experts called a “fuel-rich” event. The difference between flame-spread rates in timber fires and polyurethane foam fires was the essential clue. British researchers of fuel-rich mine fire scenarios later reported that fire in a timbered mine advanced at a rate of 2.3 to 17.1 yards per hour. Burning polyurethane foam advanced at 0.7 to 2.5 yards per
second.

Mine Safety Appliances Company and Dow Chemical had developed the product, called Rigiseal, with the research support of the USBM. The Bureau not only promoted Rigiseal, but even sent its own employees to demonstrate the product at various mines, including Bunker Hill. For some reason—ownership, incompetence, whatever—the people pushing the product at the mines were unaware of its dangers. Launhardt and others close to the Sunshine case were suspicious. They felt that the reason the foam had been overlooked during the initial investigation was to keep the government out of potential lawsuits. By then several suits were pending, including fifty-two wrongful death claims on behalf of miners' survivors, and the company's own legal claim to recover damages and lost production. The government was a defendant in both scenarios. The key issue in the litigation was the premise that, but for the combustion of rigid polyurethane foam at the 3400–09 intersection, the fire would not have been a disaster.

As expected, the lawsuits to place blame and accountability took their sweet time to make it to trial. Widows did not sue Sunshine. For some that was out of loyalty, but also because by accepting the $25,000 paid over ten years from workmen's compensation, they were precluded from taking legal action against the company. By the time the primary case was heard in a U.S. District Court in Boise, six years after the fire, in 1978, many of the litigants had dropped out or settled. A consortium of chemical companies that had had a role in the manufacture of the foam settled for $6 million, to be divided among lawyers and the two-hundred-plus heirs of represented families. Sunshine was also a plaintiff seeking damages from the USBM, the Pittsburgh firm that manufactured the self-rescuers, and the makers of the foam, Mine Safety Appliances Company. The chemical companies, however, did not settle with the mine. The government argued that no blame could be placed anywhere because the facts were unclear about when the fire ignited, where it started, and the role, if any, of the polyurethane foam. The government lawyers also tried to prove that Sunshine was more focused on production than on safety and therefore was to blame. After five months of testimony, including five days with Launhardt on the stand, Judge Ray McNichols ruled in favor of the defendants. Judge McNichols was unconvinced about the role of the foam. He said that even if the polyurethane foam had been the cause of the catastrophe, the federal government couldn't be liable under the federal Tort Claims Act. Many disagreed with the judge's ruling, but in the end it stayed firm. The only proof that polyurethane foam was recognized as dangerous was that after the Sunshine fire, no American mines continued to use the product underground.

A
ND FOR DECADES, THE FIRE PLAGUED THOSE WHO WERE THERE
M
AY
2
.

Delmar Kitchen thought he'd dealt with the fire, but in time he came to understand that he'd only become a good liar. After the sole survivor of the legendary Kitchen men buried his father and his brother, he found himself drowning in anxiety that went on for years. His hands would grow numb when he was driving, forcing him to pull over and wait it out. It was as if his own sadness wanted to choke the life out of him, like clenched hands around his neck.

Though the bodies were tucked into pockets of earth for all time, many still found it impossible to accept. Lou Ella Firkins's children would swear on the family Bible that they had seen their father's silhouette in an upstairs window watching as they played in their backyard. Once, Don Firkins's widow heard footsteps coming from her son's second-floor bedroom. She set her ironing aside and crept upstairs to catch him playing hooky. She heard the sound of Levi's pantlegs brushing against each other as he walked.

“You little shit,” she said as she pushed the door open, “I caught you!”

But the room was empty.

Lou Ella knew it was the spirit of her beloved.

For a long time after the fire, whenever Bunker Hill hotshot Harry Cougher saw someone sprawled on a towel sunbathing, he'd have to fight the compulsion to stop his car and stare hard.
Is that person dead?

Although touchy subjects were never broached in the Launhardt home, Julie, a perceptive thirteen-year-old at the time of the fire, had a vague understanding of the May 2 disaster. But all of it came from her mother. Simply put, it was that “it wasn't your dad's fault.” There were so many questions, unasked and unanswered. Julie knew her father was associated with the safety program, but was unsure to what degree. Was he solely responsible for the safety of the men? Or did he report to someone else who was? She also knew the fire was an accident, the result of something possibly preventable. When Janet and the children moved back to Pinehurst a few weeks after the fire, they faced a man more distant than ever, a man whose darkest moment was locked up and private. A mystery. Julie sensed the pain of the fire in her father's eyes, but he never said anything directly about it. He had liked to shape things a certain way, organize problems like socks rolled into little fabric eggs and placed neatly in a drawer. After the fire, he couldn't do that. Julie knew what thoughts were going through his mind.
Why was I unable to prevent this? And, once it did happen, why couldn't I have saved more?

The two oldest could see that their father was holding himself together by burying himself in his work. He couldn't let go of the fire and its cause. In a way, they believed, he was a victim along with the other ninety-one. Bob junior had a gut feeling that his dad felt the fire wouldn't have happened if he'd never left the mine for the insurance sales job in Spokane.

Whatever went through their father's mind had become a bone-crushing burden.

T
HE UNDERGROUND PRISON OF 4800 REVISITED
R
ON
F
LORY EVERY
night for weeks, even years. Myrna would wake him from a bad dream and nuzzle him back to sleep, telling him that he'd be all right. But he was locked into dreams that had him walking in semidarkness, trying to avoid stepping on men who had been changed by time and heat into something inhuman. Tom Wilkinson didn't talk quite so much about what troubled him; he was always better at holding things inside. But big Ron Flory carried the 175 hours in the Safety Zone like a heavy stone. One night in a Kellogg bar, a woman teetering on spike heels and sloshing a drink slapped him as hard as she could.

“You!” she said. “I know who
you
are.” Flory resisted touching his burning cheek. “My husband would be alive if you hadn't stolen the food out of his bucket.”

Flory hoped the slap made her feel better. He said nothing and turned away. What the woman and the other mourners didn't know was that there was also a heavy price for being a survivor. Flory paid it every time he caught the eye of one of the widows or their children.

Those who lose a loved one often console themselves with the hope that something positive can come from the tragedy. The deaths of the ninety-one Idaho miners were the clarion call that not only changed the hardrock mining industry's safety practices and restructured the federal government, but opened America's eyes to the dangers inherent in really hard labor. A year after the fire, the USBM was out of business and the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration was the new governing agency. MESA was the first federal agency with sole responsibility for assuring miners of a safe working environment. New rules were set for American mines. A check-in and checkout procedure was mandated. Hoistmen now worked in sealed-in compartments with oxygen tanks and a separate ventilation supply. Self-rescuers were no longer optional in hardrock mining, but were required to be carried by each man underground. Regular evacuation drills also became mandatory. No miner—new hire or old hand—could ever say that he didn't know his way out. In March of 1977, MESA was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the place where most thought it belonged, the Department of Labor. There it was renamed Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Exactly what started the fire remains unknown.

I
T HAS BEEN MORE THAN THREE DECADES SINCE THE FIRE KILLED
ninety-one men and Bob Launhardt was left haunted by what had happened—and what could have been done to prevent it. Sunshine Mine closed in February 2001, ironically marking the day with a fire drill. Its deepest levels are now filled with water, submerging the hoists, the trackline, and the footprints of the men who'd worked there for more than a century.

Ron and Myrna Flory divorced, and as much as he didn't want to, Ron returned underground to work in the mines. Though he is unemployed and on disability now, having suffered serious burns in a car accident several years after the fire, he still sees himself as a miner. Tom and Frances Wilkinson left the district and never looked back. Rumormongers at the time of the fire had it that the Wilkinson marriage was so shaky that Frances went to the dry to take divorce papers from his street clothes. Still married, they deny the story, but in the end, did that matter? Now living in St. Maries, Idaho, Wilkinson returned to Sunshine only briefly after the disaster. He has since enjoyed a long career with the Forest Service, working in the fresh air and the light of day.