The Deep Dark (30 page)

“There were a lot of broken ladders, some missing, too.”

Flory knew he was right about that.

Climbing out the stopes through the connecting raises was the only other possibility. Missing ladders weren't so much a concern there, but the toxic smoke was.

“The air might be trapped in dead-end stopes,” Flory said, dismissing his own plan. “We'd get up there and get overcome.”

As far as either knew, there weren't additional self-rescuers on 4800. And even if there were, neither was sure how effective they actually were. Flory had struggled with three of them, and Wilkinson's tongue smarted from being burned by one.

They had been trapped less than a day. It was nightfall topside, but underground the world was the same as it had been at noon. Down there, there was no sense of time.

I
N
S
MELTERVILLE,
B
OB
L
AUNHARDT
'
S FATHER-IN-LAW, GROCER
B
ILL
Noyen, logged the day's events in a diary, a practice he'd followed since childhood: “A major tragedy hit the district this morning when fire broke out in Sunshine Mine. We understand Bob brought out one guy and is being kept real busy in the rescue work, but so far we've had no word from him.”

D
AW
n, May 3

Pinehurst

B
OB
L
AUNHARDT PUT HIS HEAD ON THE PILLOW IN THE BASEMENT
bedroom
he'd been calling home since February. His eyes stayed open, though he fought to keep them shut. Half of the mine's day shift had made it out, leaving something in the neighborhood of eighty to ninety men trapped underground. Launhardt could trace most of Tuesday with nearly minute-by-minute precision, but other sequences were muddled by the swiftness of the unfolding disaster. His natural tendency was to keep the world ordered and neat. Everything had its place. Nothing was separate; everything was linked in some way—directly or tangentially. But he couldn't draw connections right then. There was too much to think about. Too much to worry about.

It was dawn and a little cloudy when Launhardt dressed to return to the mine. News directors and editors outside the district led with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's death, but to the people of Kellogg and Wallace and throughout the mining industry, there was only one story that really mattered. Launhardt churned through what he'd seen and what he'd heard had gone on underground. Schulz and Findley insisted self-rescuers had outright failed. Others reported that there hadn't been enough of them. What happened?

Sunshine stocked two types. The primary model in use since the 1960s was the BM-1447, dubbed by safety people a “half-hour” self-rescuer. For short durations, in relatively light smoke of the type caused by a burned-out ventilation fan, it was considered more than adequate. BM-1447s didn't act as rebreathers, which would allow a man to carry on with whatever he was doing until the smoke cleared. They were only intended to buy a man enough time to exit the mine or secure himself a place of refuge. The mechanics of the unit were simple. As smoky and gassy air passed through a hopcalite bed, it oxidized deadly carbon monoxide and converted it into harmless carbon dioxide. But the by-product of that lifesaving process was heat. Launhardt likened it to heat generated by a car's catalytic converter. Among the escapees on May 2 were men with second- and even third-degree burns on their lips and mouths.

The W-65, the “one-hour” self-rescuer, which had a heat exchanger, was a substantial improvement. Sunshine had three dozen of them. In a big mine like Sunshine—one in which it took almost an hour to get from the smooth concrete floor of the portal to the muck-encrusted working areas—a heat exchanger could make the difference between life and death.

Launhardt drove up to Big Creek, his eyes tired from the sleepless night but his body and brain jarringly alert. Cars were parked everywhere, and people were standing all over the yard. Closer to the portal, an encampment had grown. The waiting people occupied cots, huddled in blankets, and drank from Styrofoam cups embossed with the indentations of their own gnashing teeth. And whenever the sound of the double-drum reverberated, or when a weary eye detected movement, hopes were buoyed.
Someone's coming up. Someone's getting out.
So far, it had only been a cruel tease.

Additional USBM men had already descended by early morning, as had a contingent from the U.S. Department of the Interior, its managing agency. Stan Jarrett, sixty-nine, director for metal and nonmetal mine safety, was among the second wave of bureaucrats to be briefed by Al Walkup. He candidly told them Sunshine was lacking in trained men, equipment, and firefighting knowledge. Further, Walkup admitted they still didn't have a decent count of how many men were trapped. One number, however, he did know and kept secret—twenty-four were confirmed dead. Also present was Idaho's governor, Cecil Andrus, a balding man with a stripe of wavy hair combed straight back. Andrus wasn't like those political and media freeloaders who'd arrived with expense accounts and designs on getting something out of the unfolding catastrophe that they could use later—a good story or political clout. Andrus, who came with a small contingent of aides and government delegates, rightly understood the crucial role mining played in northern Idaho and in the American economy. A big fire, he knew, could devastate the district.

Meanwhile, Gordon Miner continued to exert his ever-increasing influence. Hecla's executive vice president felt the USBM men were out of their depth. He was certain that most had never seen the likes of what was happening at Sunshine. He told Jarrett that his men were in harm's way, and that if something weren't done, the disaster might claim some lives of rescue workers, too.

“Stan,” Miner said, “I don't want them down there. They don't know this mine.”

Jarrett protested, but Miner remained undeterred.

“We're in a crisis,” he said, “and your guys don't
want
to be in any crisis.”

There was no winning against Miner, and Jarrett probably knew that. They compromised. A USBM man would accompany each rescue team. The backseat role the USBM accepted was far different from the position it assumed at a coal-mine fire. Many saw that as an admission as much as a concession.

6:00
A.M.,
M
AY
3
3700 Level

J
OHNNY
L
ANG HAD FADED BLUE EYES AND THE BROKEN NOSE
OF A
boxer, which he proudly earned in his family-owned gym in the small town of Cut and Shoot, Texas. Lean and with a powerfully built upper body, Lang always enjoyed the one-on-one aspect of a fight, and to his disappointment, he didn't have the right stuff for a pugilistic career. He never went as far in the sport as a cousin, a heavyweight titleist who once fought Floyd Patterson. Lang still liked the challenge of pitting himself against another man, but in his mid-thirties his adversary was not another man, but the load of ore he intended to gyppo. Lang's biceps were still bundled up tight with muscles, and he could last a good round in the mines.

When he arrived to join the Bunker Hill hotshot helmet crew, he was told there'd be two five-man teams to explore the 3700 level—one group was primary, the other a backup. Lang, the sole Sunshine man of the group, waited while the first team emerged from the mine to replace oxygen canisters and inspect rubber tubing for wear. Burlap and wood were stacked on the timber truck, along with a supply of polyurethane foam insulation. The insulation came in two heavy canisters that, when sprayed together, created a foamy material that expanded into cracks and turned solid. Crews advanced as they foamed sections of the bulkheads or around air doors that shouldn't have leaked in the first place. The flow from compressed-air lines kicked the smoke back out of the mine.

Lang assumed he'd be in the next group, but the crew chief told him to stay put.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “I
want
to go in. What the hell good are we as a backup crew if we don't have any experience? We don't even know what's going on in there.”

“We've worked together for a long time,” the crew chief said. “We don't want anyone to panic in there.”

Those were fighting words to the ex-boxer.

“Listen,
pard,”
Lang said, twisting a term of familiarity into an epithet. “I don't panic! And I'm going with you on your next trip in.”

Twenty minutes later the former boxer inched his way down the drift. It was tranquil. There was nothing to hear but the heaving of their own lungs and the sound of the McCaas as they delivered oxygen in a world without any. Roped together and feeling their way along the rails, rescue crewmen brought in plywood and polyurethane foam spray to seal around leaky air doors and bulkheads. With each crosscut sealed, Lang and crew pressed on, worrying that they might actually be creating a tomb for a man who had found refuge in a forgotten pocket of the drift. But just beyond the 08 Shop, they stopped. No one could see a damn thing. It was as though they were up against a heavy drapery that was pulled farther away just as they reached to open it. Lang removed his lamp from his hardhat and held it below his waist, sending a beam along the wet track line. Lang couldn't draw a reference point about exactly where they were. Maps were useless. The only frame of reference that seemed relevant was the location of track switches.

On the return to the Jewell, Lang watched a USBM man monitor air quality. Oxygen was less than 1 percent and carbon dioxide was at 19 percent. Carbon monoxide levels were still beyond the test range of detector tubes—the USBM recorded 20,000 ppm. Sunshine's underground atmosphere was unlike any recorded in the history of the bureau.

Topside, Lang sought out the doctor.

“How long could a guy live in that heavy stuff?” he asked.

The grim-faced physician shook his head and conceded that a man might be able take in two breaths.

“But you'd never know you took the second one,” he added.

6:00
A.M.,
M
AY
3
Cataldo

T
HE GLASS IN FRONT OF
M
YRNA
F
LORY
'
S FACE WAS STIPPLED
WITH A
jeweled spray of condensation. It took her a second to sort out where she was and what had happened. She was in her mother-in-law's car. Her eyes focused on the world lit by the dawn. It wasn't the mine yard. There were no Sunshine families surrounding her. The car was parked in front of her mother-in-law's house in Cataldo. Myrna went inside, her face red with anger.

“Why did you leave me in the car? Why did you take me away from the mine? You know I wanted to be there.”

Ron's mother looked over her coffee mug and remained cool. Her mouth was a straight line, and her eyes hardly blinked.

“I'll take you back after breakfast,” she said.

“No.
No, you won't.” Myrna's voice broke again with emotion. “You'll take me back right now.” No one was going to push her around.
“Now!”

She made two quick decisions right there. No pills. No more trusting her mother-in-law.

In Osburn, with no word on the fate of his father-in-law, Louis Goos, or of his partner Bob Follette's son, Bill, Howard Markve returned home from the doctor's office. He was sure the fire had burned out his lungs, but the doctor's diagnosis of respiratory trouble was “chemical bronchitis.” He'd told Markve to get some fresh air. Larry Hawkins also saw a doctor who told him about the symptoms of CO poisoning. Hawkins began to wonder if those guys sleeping and “kicking back” on 4600 had already begun to succumb to the deadly gas. Everybody seemed bone-tired that morning. Was that a warning sign they'd missed? Had they already been poisoned?

6:30
A.M.,
M
AY
3

Sunshine Portal

C
HASE,
LAUNHARDT,
MINER,
AND
A
DOZEN
B
UREAU
OF
M
INES
MEN
took up residence in the second-floor rescue command center. It was a mix of men who were both united and at odds with one another: the locals versus the outsiders. Each needed the other's lapse, negligence, or incompetence to be the reason for the disaster. Crew leaders from Sunshine and Silver Summit rescue operations also joined in to share reports of progress—or lack of progress. Art Brown blew a gasket when the Sunshine team reported they'd been working in the opposite direction.

“What the hell are we doing?” He pointed at a mine schematic. “This is the end of your fresh-air base. From now on we need to go in the
same
direction.”