by Gregg Olsen
Peggy agreed, but she was sure she’d never have to make good on the pledge. Her dad was invincible.
SUNSET, MAY 2
West Shoshone County Hospital
EVENING AND EARLY-MORNING HOURS IN WEST SHOSHONE’S emergency room were pretty much the same in all the years Keith Dahlberg served as its primary physician. When Bunker’s swing shift let out, he’d see a flurry of women and children and some begrudging man who probably wished he hadn’t gone straight to the Tip Top Bar. A couple of hours later, between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., the bar swarm would arrive with injuries from a brawl. Around 3:00 a.m., the last distinct group would arrive at the ER, often rolled in on stretchers: teenagers who’d been out partying and maybe rolled a car somewhere along the river, too drunk to drive, but limber enough to survive the crash. Around 4:00 a.m., Dr. Dahlberg could finally relax. Even in the mining district, little happened at that hour.
In a town with more than twenty bars, fights in Kellogg on payday were numerous. Dahlberg had ER duty every Friday. He’d stitched up a lot of the same faces again and again. When he heard that Whitey’s Bar had wrapped shag carpeting around its ceiling support columns, his sigh of relief was heard clear to the other side of town. The number of banged-up heads and busted teeth dropped precipitously.
Sadly, some workers never needed the company ambulance and its fast ride down the hill. One man Dahlberg saw had been run over by a mine car, and his head had been severed. Another miner took the one-way tumble down Bunker’s incline shaft. When he was found at the bottom a mile later, his skin had been sanded down with grit so coarse it had wiped away all human features. He looked like a bloody salamander.
The West Shoshone staff braced for a deluge of burn and smoke-inhalation cases on May 2. Byron Schulz and Bob McCoy were the first of what they expected would be scores of miners. The medical staff heard that more than a hundred men were still trapped in Sunshine’s smoky underground. The doctors pulled contingency plans from a gunmetal gray cabinet near the nurse’s station. They knew that when miners started coming in, they had better be ready. Having been underground at the mine, Dr. Dahlberg realized how immense Sunshine was, and how difficult the rescue effort would be. There were endless drifts, and perpetual and wilting heat. Perspiration had rolled down from his underarms like water from a leaky shower head. With the added heat of a fire, the environment would be close to hell. Just waiting down there could kill them, he thought.
Things had quieted since Schulz’s admission earlier in the day. Of all the things the cager related to the staff, nothing was more surprising than that the double-drum was only running the south side. Why had the north side sat idle? The fastest way to get the men out was to run both sides. Schultz had heard Gene Johnson give the order, but he didn’t know the reasoning behind it. He also talked of going to a level and seeing men sitting with their faces in their hands. They were quiet, but alive. He’d made a second attempt to get them out, but it hadn’t been in time.
“They were all dead,” he said. “There was nothing I could do.”
Dr. Dahlberg had finished his rounds and was leaving for home when Margaret Hanna accosted him near the ER entrance. She was the wife of Sunshine pump man Bill Hanna, forty-seven. Her husband was among those trapped on 3100. Her words sputtered from her lips, one bit at a time.
“I know . . . something’s wrong. I’m worried . . . about him.”
He reassured her and led her inside to write out a prescription for a sedative. She needed to get some rest.
Practicing medicine in the district meant dealing with sudden traumas and the stealthy illnesses of the workingmen of the woods and mines. Loggers arrived with bloody injuries, the kind that happen when steel collides with human flesh. Miners, of course, were seen because giant rocks had crushed their small bones. Zinc plant workers arrived with crusts of dried blood outlining nostrils from nosebleeds caused by the pervasive cloud of sulfuric acid in the refinery. Smelter employees came in with symptoms of lead poisoning—severe joint pains, and upset stomachs that no amount of seltzer could cure.
Sand, seemingly innocuous in itself, created an occupational hazard peculiar to hardrock mining, one that the new doctor hadn’t read about anywhere in the annals of medicine. The fine-grained sand used to backfill mined-out stopes was a by-product of the milling process. Known as gall, it was tainted by chemicals and corrosives used to extract minerals from the ore. And, of course, it was everywhere underground. Miners called the result of sharp little particles working their way into the folds of their skin, especially around the crotch, being “galded.” The gritty residue rubbed the flesh raw. It was inescapable, like wearing clothing made of sandpaper. For some, it had the sting of a dip in acid, cracking the skin around genitals or underarms to the point of bleeding. Others found gall an annoyance they could treat with the freezing jolt of a jock-itch spray. Many were galded around their brows or in their hair, too, the result of cap bands rubbing the skin. Redness and a dripping, oozing goo, like seepage from a bad burn, were the main indicators. Ridding themselves of irritating sand was one of the primary reasons men wasted no time getting to the showers after shift. Some went even further than merely soaping up to wash away the muck and sand from their bodies; they washed their diggers in the showers, too. The concrete floor sometimes resembled the silt of a braided stream.
And to each patient, the doctor suggested commonsense precautions.
“Wash your hands before you eat,” he’d tell miners. “Change your clothes at work. Otherwise, you’re taking lead dust home in your car.”
Dr. Dahlberg understood the underlying reasons behind the inevitable rejection of his advice. The kind of men who took underground jobs were the kind who didn’t listen to doctors, didn’t wear seat belts, and gleefully tempted fate by taking chances.
Tuesday night, Dr. Dahlberg made up his mind. They could use a doctor up at the mine, and it might as well be him.
8:15 P.M., MAY 2
Sunshine Bridge
HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR ROB CHASE UNLATCHED THE GATE ACROSS the creek bridge. The first five bodies had been deposited in the back of a station wagon and the ambulances. They were Bob Bush, forty-six; repairman Pat Hobson, fifty-seven; El Paso–born Roberto Diaz, fifty-five; shift boss Paul Johnson, forty-seven; and Wayne Blalack, thirty-five. Chase waved the vehicles through, very quietly and as unobtrusively as possible, though everyone knew their cargo. The teenager’s eyes lit on two bodies shrouded by dark olive blankets as the ambulances rumbled over the bridge.
His cousin pointed at the largest. “That one’s Bob Bush,” he said.
Down Big Creek Road, Viola Chase and her youngest son stood outside and watched the ambulances drive quietly past, lights off, sirens mute.
There’s probably a dead guy in the back of that, Pete thought.
Marvin had called Viola and said the fire was exceptionally serious. “From now on,” Viola told Pete, “our lives will never be the same.”
Thirty-one
8:30 P.M., MAY 2
Sunshine Portal
THE CAR RADIO WAS PLAYING SOFTLY WHEN GOD SPOKE TO Myrna Flory. Ron Flory’s eighteen-year-old wife relaxed and loosened her grip on the steering wheel. The dark blue Charger moved on up the road toward the mine, and feathery conifers engulfed the windshield with a dark green blur. Somehow a message was telegraphed to her that her husband would be all right. Don’t pray for Ron anymore. He’ll be all right. Use your prayers for the others. She wasn’t a particularly religious young woman. She’d had too much living to do to sit on a church pew. But at that moment, Myrna Flory was a believer. She parked the car, took a moment to steady herself from the revelation, and started across the parking lot. Her long brown hair, wet from a hasty shower, hung limp against her shoulders.
Within a few steps of the Big Creek Bridge, a man introduced himself as a reporter planning a book about the fire.
“They just found your husband dead,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, they did not,” she
shot back, refusing to stop or give any more of a reaction. That’s all he’d been after, anyway. She ran across the bridge to a mine supervisor and asked if he knew anything. The man, with a stony expression of shock, shook his head. She huddled with Mary Russell. Russell’s husband, Mark, was Ron’s best friend. Both women were convinced good news was coming.
WHERE THE COLUMN OF SMOKE FROM BIG HOLE MET THE NIGHT sky, there was a jagged tear in the atmosphere, angry and otherworldly. The mine vomited a dark cloud of such size that those watching had a hard time believing that, despite its vast size, it could hold that much smoke. And though it was some kind of war, with an army of rescuers itching to reach the battle zone to find survivors, another kind of skirmish was taking place between the families and the mine staff, and reporters with their billy-club-sized microphones and impertinent questions.
“If your husband’s dead, what are you going to do?” a reporter asked a woman sitting on a bench.
The woman convulsed into a loud and unsettling spasm of sobs. The man scribbled something down, as though her response and not his insensitive question was the story.
“If your dad is in there and doesn’t come out alive, what are you going to do?” another asked.
Angry words were exchanged between miners’ kin and reporters. Marvin Chase wanted to put the focus on the rescue effort. He clung to the hope that those trapped were merely waiting for rescuers. Focusing on the worst possible outcome was counterproductive. He reminded reporters that compressed-air lines ran through the mine. They were chest-high and accessible just about everywhere a man could be. All miners carried pipe wrenches to tap into the air lines that ran whiz-bangs, drills, and other machinery that required a power source other than an electrical battery. Water could be accessed the same way. Underground, Chase insisted, the trapped men had ample access to air. As long as Sunshine’s surface crew kept the flow going, he was sure they’d survive.
Bob Launhardt doubted the scenario’s plausibility, but kept his mouth shut. He knew Sunshine’s underground atmosphere was heavy with carbon monoxide, and that anybody who took a breath of it dropped dead. The only true hope, and a thin one at that, was that the trapped men had found a place with good air and then were able to build themselves an airtight barricade. It was a message that he wanted the rescue team—and reporters—to know.
“Someone could have gone up a raise and turned on the compressed air,” Chase insisted. “Other men have done it at other mine fires. It can happen here, too.”
The increasingly embattled mine manager went one better as the cyclone of reporters swirled around. Chase told them that air was being drawn out of the air lines. Implicit in that message was that men were drawing on the air line.
In truth, Marvin Chase knew better, but didn’t know what else to say. He had been thrust into something terrible and unforeseen. He responded to all questions with a manufactured confidence that he thought would create hope, not despair.
RON FLORY’S MOTHER, BELLE, WENT TOWARD HER DAUGHTER-IN-law with a sense of purpose that Myrna, chain-smoking and shivering by a smudge pot, knew on sight did not bode well. There was no greeting or outstretched arms. In fact, there never had been. Belle Flory was not shy about making her feelings known. She thought her “number-one son” could have done far better than Myrna Keene.
“I’ll be handling my son’s checking account,” she said, her eyes fastened on Myrna’s. “It’s still in my name, you know.”
Myrna stood there and said nothing. For a second the words didn’t fully register.
“I’ll handle everything that belonged to my son.”
Myrna gave Ron’s mother a cold stare.
“You can’t write any checks,” Mrs. Flory continued. “Everything is in my name—truck and car, too.”
“No,” Myrna said, finally finding her voice. “Ron’s my husband and he’s coming home.” She was unsure of her rights, but she thought a wife would have some say in her husband’s affairs. Why was his mother acting like he was dead, buried in an unmarked grave on 4800? Myrna wanted to believe that her big man would get out of the mine and carry her to the car, away from the mine and, most of all, away from his mother. God told her so.
THAT FIRST DAY SHE MET RON FLORY AT HIS TRAILER IN OSBURN, Garnita Keene couldn’t see what could draw her sister and the older miner together. He was quiet to the point of being almost noncommunicative. Myrna could jabber on like a magpie and flit about a room, soaking up attention and making people laugh with her sassy wit. Ron liked to stick around the house and quietly watch TV, or work on his truck. Myrna liked to go out to drink and party—though as a teen she’d confined herself mostly to riverside keggers. He was settled. She was a wild child. Yet, despite that, in time Garnita could see that there was chemistry between them. Instead of her dominating his life, Myrna settled, more or less, into his world.
“Want to go out for a beer?” she asked her sister not long after she met Flory.
“No, better not,” Myrna replied, not unhappily. “Ron wants me to stick around here.”
The reply shook Garnita a little. It was such a change, coming from a sister who never missed an opportunity to hang out. It could be for the better, she thought after mulling it over for a while. Myrna needs to settle down some.
Ron’s younger brother, Robert, had doubts about the pair. He liked Myrna all right, but she came with a background and a baby. She needed a man who would take care of her, a man she could still control in a way that allowed her to keep her freedom. But when this pretty young woman said she wanted him, Robert watched his brother set aside a grown man’s reservations and let himself fall for her. Myrna could be carefree, and Ron could be a devoted husband and made-to-order father.
EVENING, MAY 2
4800 Level
RON FLORY’S CAP LAMP WENT DARK. HE FOOLED WITH THE CABLE and the battery connection, but nothing happened. Tom Wilkinson’s lamp was still viable, but for how much longer? Down the drift was an orange warning light used to alert the crew of approaching motors. It was no more than a twenty-five-watt bulb, but in the near absolute darkness of the drift it did a good job of illuminating the wall of smoke, burnishing it into an eerie golden brown. The motor’s fixed headlight also spread a beam into the Safety Zone. That light was powered by three batteries, and remained steady, washing the black walls with an even spray of illumination. They had water—all they could drink—but they had no food. Even so, hunger wasn’t as much of a concern as their dwindling supply of smokes. Flory, in particular, was a nervous smoker. Tapping a Pall-Mall Red from the pack, he saw that his cigarettes were nearly gone. No food, no smokes. The only thing worse would be no light. Wilkinson knew the battery on the motor wouldn’t last forever. The lamp had already dimmed somewhat.
Wilkinson thought they should conserve the light.
“Let’s try it without the motor,” he said.
A miner’s lamp is his most important link to survival. While shaft stations and underground shops throughout a mine are illuminated, often the beam from a cap lamp is the only thing between men and total darkness. Total darkness wasn’t the same as night with eyes closed tight. A man holding a hand in front of his face in total darkness wouldn’t know where it was, even when it was his own outstretched hand. A failed lamp meant it was time to sit and wait for help. Walking was suicide.
Flory shut off the headlight, and Wilkinson switched off his lamp. The world instantly went entirely black. Nothing can prepare a man for total darkness, how it rattles the mind to be blind when you know you can see. The darkness cinched tight around their necks and pressed against their chests. Their eyes spun in their sockets, searching for a pinprick of light, or even a shadow, to suggest a variation in the darkness. Their world had been immersed in a great, oppressive nothingness.
It bothered Flory more than Wilkinson, perhaps because he had no cap lamp to reach for if panic seized him. The mine felt suddenly claustrophobic, closing in on him in a way that made him feel the whole thing was crushing him
in suffocating darkness.
“Jesus, this could be bad,” he said, in an understatement typical of him.
Both men had heard stories of miners who had been trapped without working lamps. Some had started crawling, feeling their way along the ribs, trying to reach the curve that would lead them to some light. Throughout the Coeur d’Alenes there were tales of miners who had come across the mummified remains of hapless men whose carbide lamps had long ago fizzled to nothing, and who had crawled on their stomachs feeling for a way out, but their fingers had found nothing.
A half hour elapsed, and Wilkinson decided they’d had enough of the experiment.
“We got light now. Might as well use it while we got it.”
He turned on his lamp, and Flory went to the motor.
EVENING, MAY 2
Sunshine Parking Lot
NOBODY WAS SAYING IT, BUT AS DARKNESS DESCENDED ON THE mountainsides around the mine—its lights a beacon like never before—it was becoming increasingly unlikely that first aid would be needed. Sunshine employees cut burlap yardage into seven-foot sections to cradle and insulate the injured from the cold floor of the drift. As a precaution in the event a helmet crewman was injured, a first-aid station was set up in the old Jewell Shaft. The night’s subfreezing temperature left the intermittent puddles in the parking lot shellacked with ice. People stood in groups linked by proximity that easily indicated who belonged together. Many had Red Cross–issued blankets wrapped around windbreakers and hooded sweatshirts. Some shivered despite the woolly wrapping. A young man and woman kept a perch on the ledge below the safety sign. The man wore cowboy boots, and his sideburns touched his jawline. The woman wore bell-bottoms with a faded checkered pattern. Hot vapors from her coffee curled around wan features. She might have been pretty ten hours before. Now she looked lost, her eyes hollow from the late hour.
Frances Wilkinson prayed in the parking lot. The smudge pots had turned her naturally curly brown hair—which she’d painstakingly straightened—to gunk. Her hands were ice cold, but she didn’t care. Things were bad, but she wasn’t sure just how bad. She prayed Tom would be safe, that he and Ron were together, looking out for each other. Tom will be all right. When a Red Cross worker offered her a name tag, she declined.