by Gregg Olsen
“It will help you,” Beehner had reportedly said, offering it to the woozy and scared miner.
Others reported that the sanitation nipper had left the cage, leaving his self-rescuer with the other man, and walked the smoky drift to the Jewell, where he’d eventually met with Launhardt’s rescue crew. His entire system, quite possibly, had been full of carbon monoxide, leaving him impaired.
Every man in the command center knew Sunshine was on the defensive, much of it owing to Byron Schulz’s accusatory hospital interview. Ralph Nader’s people—coincidentally in Spokane at the time—fueled the controversy. Nader charged Sunshine with a general disregard for safety. An example that surfaced was a fire on April 22, 1971, when a power cable on 2700 had shorted and set ablaze some drift timber. Federal and state law required reporting any fire, but Sunshine had made no such notification. When state investigators learned of the fire, the evidence was gone. Even worse, the mine had not been evacuated. Instead, employees were put on standby while shifters searched for the source of the fire. Even the diehard company men had to concede the scenario was disturbingly similar to the events of May 2, 1972. But there was more. During that same incident, Launhardt’s predecessor, Jim Atha, had refused the inspector’s request to test Sunshine’s stench system. Atha had insisted all was fine, but the inspector was skeptical. He didn’t think the system worked at all.
Most who escaped the mine Tuesday didn’t smell anything other than smoke. A few questioned whether Bob Launhardt had even released the stench in the first place.
In theory, the stench could have worked to alert the men underground because the odor in the damp, wet mine wouldn’t dissipate easily. When John Brandon, Sunshine’s superintendent in the early sixties, used to go underground, he’d light a cigar after getting off the cage on 3100. He never took a motor to 10-Shaft, because he wanted to smoke that cigar. It was a ten- to twelve-minute walk, and about the time he was five minutes from the blue room where all the mine bosses congregated, they’d catch a whiff of cigar smoke. “Brandon’s coming. Back to work!” And off they’d scurry with logbooks and pencil stubs. Smoke didn’t fade away; it hung in the air and was carried by the intake airflow down the drift to 10-Shaft. Just like stench injected into the compressed-air line, Brandon’s cigar had been a warning system.
The problem with any stench warning system at Sunshine was the mine’s vast size; it took about twenty-five minutes for stench to get from the surface to 10-Shaft. Launhardt doubted that even if the stench had been dumped when the first guy smelled smoke, the foul-smelling odor would have made its way to all the lower levels in time to get the men out. There was another drawback, too. One in twenty people is anosmic—unable to smell. In metal mining, where stench-warning systems were the sole means of alerting men of a fire, safety engineers like Launhardt always hoped that no two men paired in a stope shared that genetic quirk.
Launhardt never complained about the paperwork or the politics of a job he considered his calling. He worked while others yakked about ball scores or fishing trips. He worked through lunch. The girls in the office, in fact, chuckled over his dogged work ethic. He’d get to his desk and pull up his typewriter and bang out a report. As the company’s safety engineer, he didn’t have to press a single key; but Launhardt just preferred not to bother anyone for anything he could do himself. He also felt a need to continually prove himself to others—long after he had likely earned their respect. Much of that was caused by his failure to finish college, though he knew ten times more than half the engineers who used Sunshine as a rung up the ladder to better pay and greater prestige. He did whatever it took to get the job done, in hopes that there would be some recognition for whatever sacrifice he made. He sought to define himself by his work. Janet and the kids understood that, and adjusted their routine to accommodate him. If the TV was on or someone was playing the piano, or even in the middle of a Monopoly game, everything would stop when Dad’s car stopped in the driveway. Janet would put an index finger to her lips and remind the kids to hush.
“You’re father’s had a stressful day,” she’d say in her soft, compassionate voice. “Go read. Leave Dad alone.”
Yet, by the third day of the fire, there was no place to retreat. The biggest rescue effort in mining history was under way, and Bob Launhardt was in the middle of it. And worst of all, he knew better than anyone else how deadly that smoke was. One breath and a man would drop to the floor. How could the guys underground escape the poisoned air?
STEELWORKERS LOCAL PRESIDENT LAVERN MELTON WALKED THE same two hundred feet through the yard to the office and back again, nearly wearing a rut in the muddy ground. He was rightfully bitter that so many of his union brethren hadn’t made it out on Tuesday. The Steelworkers had been the glue that held the crew together, and not just at contract time. It was true that some meetings were sparsely attended, but the workingmen of the underground knew that the union was there for a reason—though it wasn’t the same one union leaders espoused whenever they could get in earshot of a reporter or mine management. The rank and file wanted better pay. The union leadership concurred, but it also sought improved working conditions for the last industry in which men still held power over machines.
Melton was old school in his unfettered distrust of management. When the fire erupted, he pointed the finger at the company.
“They knew this was going to happen,” Melton muttered. “We all knew it.”
Launhardt, who had once been president of the local, was dumbfounded by the remark. He thought Melton was cutting his own throat.
“Why would he say that?” Launhardt asked a friend. “He’s saying that he knew. If he knew, why didn’t he say something before?”
Derided by the company as a blowhard union rabble-rouser, Melton wanted tougher safety measures in place even before the last body was pulled from the mine. Melton’s rhetoric became blood splashed into shark-infested waters. Ralph Nader insisted that mining companies and the government agencies were in cahoots—neither had the best interests of workingmen at heart. Data from the USBM supported Nader and Melton. Bureau statistics pegged Sunshine as one of the worst safety offenders in the country, with more than thirty-five safety violations noted during a November 1971 inspection. The statistics on injuries were even more damning. In 1970, Sunshine averaged 136.15 injuries per 1 million man-hours. The coal mining industry average was 22 per million. Workers were three times more likely to meet their end at Sunshine than at any other U.S. metal mine.
Launhardt defended Sunshine’s safety training, procedures, and safety record to a bunch of reporters, but it went badly. He confirmed that Sunshine did not stage fire drills; he knew of not a single instance when Sunshine ever had. Only one mine in the entire district ever ran such a drill—the Star Mine. And that had been fourteen years ago. Such trials were impractical; it would take a man several hours to climb a series of ladders up 4,000 feet or more. Besides, Launhardt thought, why would Sunshine run drills for something that until a few days ago had never seemed possible?
Sunshine’s evacuation plan was also targeted after Schulz and Riley complained that men didn’t know their way out on 3100. Launhardt pointed out that signs were posted all along the Silver Summit escapeway; he’d put them up himself. And the mine, he said, did have an evacuation plan. Men were told to gather on their respective stations at 10-Shaft and wait for the cage. Carbon monoxide readings would automatically shut air doors, and men would be belled up to 3100 to exit via the Silver Summit escapeway. It didn’t work that way on May 2 because smoke had filled the mine so quickly.
Launhardt pointed the finger back at the bureau when a reporter told him the government considered the mine unsafe.
“If they knew, and it was true,” Launhardt said, “why didn’t they shut us down?”
When his remarks were carried nationwide, they made Sunshine appear ill-prepared and oblivious to the danger of fire. But in hardrock mining, shaft fires were the primary fear. Not only were shafts lined with timbe
r, but they were gathering places for smoking men and, when repairs were needed, workers wielding blowtorches. Those running hardrock mines of Sunshine’s size took precautions to ensure that shaft fires could be snuffed out. The Jewell had three enormous deluge water rings, and 10-Shaft had one. When needed, a Niagara was unleashed by the hoistman. But neither shaft was burning.
The self-rescuers. The safety training. The escapeways. Each had to be answered. Federal law required two such escape routes, and Sunshine met that on a technical level, with the Jewell and the Silver Summit. But there had been a problem when the fire broke out. And it was major. The men on the lower levels were unable to use the cage to get to either of the escapeways. Launhardt ruminated over this alone. There was no waking anyone to share what he held inside or what he couldn’t allow himself to say out loud.
To save the trapped miners in the deepest levels of the Sunshine, Launhardt knew helmet crews were going to have to move deeper down in the mine—down where, he and others hoped, there was a place of refuge from the toxic air. Down there in the smoldering darkness, someone had to be alive. Down on 3100, a helmet crewman stood at the shaft and looked downward. It was impossible to see what was going on down another thousand feet of smoke-clogged passage. For all anyone knew, the fire was raging down there. Someone came up with the idea of loading up the cage with cardboard boxes and other burnables and sending the load to 4000.
Slowly the cage was lowered into darkness. A few minutes later it returned. The boxes were not scorched, so there was no fire below. Next, a ringing phone was lowered to 5200, but no one picked it up. Were the men bulkheaded in and unable to get to it? Or were they dead?
MIDDAY, MAY 4
Osburn
KWAL’S FREQUENT BROADCASTS FOR FOOD, SUPPLIES, AND VOLUNTEERS continued to bring overwhelming, and almost unwelcome, response. Mountains of sandwiches were growing stale, and blankets and cartons of smokes were piled up so high their sheer numbers invited both waste and pilfering. The Red Cross started to reduce the quantity of whatever was needed by the rescue crews and the families. If they wanted one hundred sandwiches, they asked for fifty.
People sometimes focus on the smallest things to relieve their pain. When a few at the mine began to grouse about KWAL’s music, a pastor stepped in and gave the Wallace radio station some friendly advice.
“Play two country-westerns and a hymn. Alternate them.”
Radio station manager Paul Robinson rearranged the station’s playlist—no more of the mishmash of music they played to try to please everybody in the district. He gave the miners and their families what they needed.
Thirty-eight
AFTERNOON, MAY 4
Sunshine Mine Yard
IN THE YARD THE SUN SHONE WEAKLY THROUGH PARTING CLOUDS and a haze of smoke when gyppo miner Buz Bruhn returned to help with the rescue. He was sure his partner, Dewellyn Kitchen, was tough enough to survive, and Bruhn wanted to go in after him. He even had a plan. He went to talk to foreman Jim Bush about the borehole from 3700 and how he saw that as the only place miners could get fresh air. He’d helped drive the drift on 4800, and he knew fresh air poured down like a cold shower. There were coolers on that level, a battery charger, and a water line—water, light, and oxygen—everything a man would need. Bruhn wanted to go down the narrow shaft, with a single caveat.
“I’ll put a gun in my pocket,” he said. “When I get down there, those bastards will probably try to take my rebreather away from me.”
Later, when Bruhn was in the toilet across from the double-drum, he heard men outside talking. Someone was boasting that Sunshine was going to come out of the disaster smelling like a rose. Not only did insurance cover the financial losses associated with a closure, but Sunshine was likely to reap profits from an inevitable spike in the metals market when it reopened to higher prices caused by a silver shortage.
“This isn’t going to hurt us at all,” the voice said.
The remark, Bruhn learned, came from the lips of New York bigwig Irwin Underweiser, president of the Sunshine Mining Company. He was huddled with a bunch of lawyers and accountants. They were counting money, of course, not bodies. That comment, and others, was heard by reporters, and it made its way into the nation’s newspapers.
“Try to buy back the lives lost with higher silver prices. How can they even think about those things when the entire valley is in mourning?” asked a rescue worker.
AFTERNOON, MAY 4
Woodland Park
WITH HER HUSBAND’S BODY AT THE FUNERAL HOME AND HIS SERVICE looming in two days, Wava Beehner was worried about everything—what Don would wear, what she’d wear, and of course, how she and the children would get by. She marked off items like a grocery list. There was no other way. Frugal though he was, Don Beehner appreciated a decent suit. Not long before the fire, he’d purchased a fine-looking dark blue wool suit—not too heavy, not too light. He’d only worn it a time or two. Because a new suit demanded new shoes, Mrs. Beehner picked out a pair of oxfords. She put the shoes in a paper bag, and carefully walked the suit on its hanger to the car for the funeral home. She caught herself worrying that the shoes would be too heavy on his feet and he might not like that. She began to cry over her foolishness.
When it was time to pick out her outfit, Wava and her sister pored over dresses and suits hanging crisply in Cam’s, a Wallace dress shop tucked into an 1890s building off the main drag. After a search, Wava found one that flattered her washed-out complexion and auburn hair. The bodice had chocolate and white stripes; the rest was solid brown. It was a sensible and dignified spring dress, one that didn’t shout funeral and could be worn again. Best of all, it was a size eleven. She’d dropped weight, more from not eating than from her perpetual dieting.
When Wava emerged from the dressing room, her sister let out a gasp.
“Boy,” she said without thinking, “Don should see you now. You’ve really lost weight.”
It was the kind of remark one wished could be reeled back in. Her sister meant no harm.
Later that day, Wava and her brother-in-law returned to the funeral home. Music played faintly, and people spoke in muted voices. Tears zigzagged down her cheeks as she stared down at her husband’s body, lying in the casket, eyes shut and looking peaceful. But something felt wrong, and her grief snapped into anger. The mortician’s cosmetologist had a heavy hand. Don would never want this. She opened her purse, pulled out her handkerchief, and started to wipe away the makeup.
Her brother-in-law was horrified. “You can’t do that,” he said.
“He wouldn’t want that on him in life,” she said. “Why would he have it now? I will take every speck of it off.”
The makeup from her husband’s forehead and eyelids turned her handkerchief dark as she gently wiped his face.
Don was a man’s man, she thought. He’ll be buried like one.
AFTERNOON, MAY 4
Sunshine Dry
IT WAS AS IF GOD HADN’T WANTED ANYONE TO SURVIVE. NO ONE wanted to announce to the media that the rescue effort had been stalemated to the point where, if there were men bulkheaded in somewhere, the passage of time in the hot mine was likely to be fatal even if there was good air. Rescue crewmen found Sunshine’s dry the only place they could go to escape the families and the incessant pressure. They sat on benches across from the showers, smoking in silence. The hope they saw in the women’s eyes had become a source of embarrassment. They were doing all they could, but nothing was working.
Talky Taylor knew where he’d find Delmar Kitchen. Everyone did. Kitchen had been planted on a bench in the dry for three days. His face was stippled with dark whiskers against pallid skin, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wanted to be there when news came about his brother and father. They had last been seen on 3100 near 10-Shaft.
“Forget it, Delmar,” Taylor said, approaching. “They’re gone. That’s it.”
Kitchen didn’t say anything. He just looked up.
“Both of them. You might as well go home.�
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On his way to his car, Kitchen was an easy mark for reporters. He told them he’d never had a fire drill in his two years at Sunshine. Escape routes were never taught, nor were BM-1447 self-rescuers adequate—even though he admitted one had likely saved his life.
Other underground workers felt that death and danger were part and parcel of their industry.
“Working in a mine is like flying in a jet airliner,” one miner said. “You know some jets are going to crash, but you keep on flying anyway.”
THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON, SOME FIFTY CHILDREN AT KELLOGG’S Sunnyside Elementary kept transistor radios down low and tuned to KWAL. Many had dads up at the mine. And if not a father, they had a brother, a favorite uncle, or a grandfather. With each news update, little fingers would reach for the volume knob.
Thirty-nine
EVENING, MAY 4
Big Creek Neighborhood
BETTY JOHNSON LOVED HER KITCHEN. THE CABINETS WERE NEW and the walls had been paneled in a warm, honey-colored wood. Places that required paint were a cheery, daffodil yellow. A big picture window faced the road to the mine. She liked to sit with a cup of coffee and a magazine, looking out, waiting for her husband, Gene, to come home. Her brother, Robert Barker, also stopped by nearly every day. As she sat there with her son and daughters, facing the darkened road, those moments were amplified in her memory. The ringing of the kitchen phone ended the forced small talk and speculation around the big round table. Peggy Delange answered the call. It was Jim Farris, Sunshine’s personnel director. She handed the receiver to her mother.