The Deep Dark (45 page)

“Why can't I go with him?” she asked. “I don't want to be here by myself. I don't want to live this way.”

“I think we've lost her,” Peggy told her sister. “She's never going to let go.”

Betty Johnson was not alone. Across the mining district there were other wives, sons, brothers, and best friends who were never going to let go. No one really could.

I
NDEED, ALL LIVES IN THE DISTRICT WERE REWRITTEN IN THE
smoke of May 2, 1972. In both direct and subtle ways, many would never get over the fire. And no matter the outcome of myriad state and federal lawsuits that sought to fix blame and responsibility, only Bob Launhardt would devote himself to discovering what had caused an impossible fire. Whether he was motivated merely by a personal and professional need to know, or by undeserved guilt, it did not matter. With ninety-one dead, answers become a necessity, and for Launhardt they were an obsession. A congressional probe spotlighted blame and the cause of the fire, but did not answer why a fire had ignited in Sunshine Mine. Hundreds of men testified, and throughout the proceedings, emotions remained on high boil. Driven by the USBM and the Interior Department, the testimony had the distinct feel of scapegoating rather than fact-finding. The House Labor Subcommittee heard damaging and bitter testimony from cager Byron Schulz and Lavern Melton, president of the local Steelworkers. Melton claimed management had not only ignored safety concerns, but had frequently retaliated whenever any were brought to the attention of the company. He told about Don Beehner's complaint of a safety violation concerning accumulated garbage in drifts: “He was rewarded for his effort by being required to clean it out.”

Outsiders who'd pushed themselves into the story grabbed headlines. Nader's Raider Davitt McAteer divided culpability by telling the subcommittee that not only was Sunshine criminally negligent, but the USBM was blameworthy for its lax manner of dealing with violations. Sunshine, the twenty-eight-year-old lawyer told the panel, had the worst safety record of all metal mines, but had
never
been fined or assessed any penalties.

The Kellogg doctor who volunteered at the mine, Keith Dahlberg, sent a letter to his family back East. He was irritated by those grandstanders: “A lot has been said by Ralph Nader and others about the deplorable safety conditions at Sunshine, which is always easier in retrospect. One wonders why if he's such an expert on safety, he did not warn us a couple times.”

Most of Sunshine's management testified locally, so they could remain at the mine to help fight the fire, which continued to burn for weeks. Launhardt went before the investigative committee in the auditorium of the Washington Water Power Company in Kellogg. He faced a wall of lawyers and experts from Interior and the USBM. He answered each question coolly and professionally.

Sunshine's lawyer pushed the point that the government had done a poor job of educating mining companies.

“Did the Bureau of Mines ever advise you that all old workings should be sealed?”

“No,” Launhardt replied.

“Did they ever advise you that the hoistman should have oxygen apparatus for survival and be trained to use it?”

“No.”

“Did they ever advise you that there should be a self-rescue unit for each employee?”

“No.”

“Did they ever advise you that you should have an accurate record system to determine what employees were underground at all times?”

“They never advised us of this.”

The only time emotion flickered was when he had to answer questions about Don Beehner.

“Do you know why he would have removed his face mask?” a lawyer asked.

“I can't answer that,” he said, hesitating slightly. “I don't think anybody knows. An act of heroism.”

After two hours, Launhardt finished what would be the first of seemingly countless depositions that in many ways would consume his life.

Certainly during the initial investigation, Launhardt was convinced the catastrophe was mostly a product of ignorance, bad timing, and poor ventilation, none of which he could have done much about. Always a great student, Launhardt was the kind of man who devoured every detail on a subject of interest. The USBM and the Department of the Interior had conducted the biggest investigation in the history of mining, and Launhardt supported their efforts in every way he could. But they had their own agenda as the governmental agencies responsible for ensuring that mines comply with federal law. For Launhardt, to comprehend what happened on May 2 was to dissect what had led to the mind-set that had everyone in the district asking the same thing:
What can burn in a hardrock mine?
But there was also one other question on Launhardt's mind:
Why was the smoke so toxic?

It didn't take long for him to find some answers. The USBM had recently sent two ventilation experts to Big Creek, first in November of the previous year, and then a follow-up a couple weeks before the fire. Launhardt believed the USBM should have recognized the potential for a short circuit of the mine's ventilation system, which ultimately led to poisonous outtake air being pumped in with fresh, breathable intake air. They had been through Sunshine at the exact location where the exhaust airway intersected with the old workings, and had seen firsthand the ventilation fans that were in place upstream from those mined-out vein structures. They'd walked right past the leaking bulkheads. They'd seen it all and never remarked about it. They'd never said,
Hey, Sunshine, move the fans downstream from 09, so that if a fire ever occurs in those bulkheads, the smoke and gas will be blown out of the min
e—
not back through it.

Everyone knew that Sunshine's ventilation system was completely inadequate. The deeper the working levels, the hotter the temperature and the greater the need for enhanced air movement. The dead-end stopes with dangerous gases or low oxygen levels were found below 4800. The USBM knew that, and recommended in its preliminary report that the company straighten out and enlarge sections of the exhaust airway on 3400 to allow greater airflow.

Sunshine's ventilation engineering staff had met with the USBM's Warren Andrews and Ralph Foster on April 24, just nine days before the fire. Launhardt held Andrews and Foster in high regard. They were not, by his estimation, government hacks occupying space until pension time rolled around. The USBM team measured air volume and calculated leakage into the old workings. Andrews and Foster understood the ventilation system of the mine as well as, if not better than, the company's own experts on airflow. The USBM men knew how a short circuit of the mine's ventilation system could lead to serious, if not fatal, consequences for the men underground busting rock.

FBI
AND
USBM
CHEMISTS EXAMINED EVIDENCE COLLECTED
FROM
Joe and Delores Armijo's basement where the deluded woman insisted her husband's evil twin had conducted experiments with incendiary devices. The samples were inconclusive. Neither the Interior Department nor the FBI could rule out that arson had been the cause of the fire. Interior's assistant director Stan Jarrett, however, kept pushing the arson angle. He doubted the thoroughness of the Shoshone County investigation. The FBI responded in an internal memo that “the U.S. Attorney felt no active investigation warranted by FBI . . . various parties having vested interest are trying to shift blame and/or responsibility for this disaster.”

A while later, other reasons for the investigation appeared to emerge. According to another FBI internal memo: “He mentioned that there are political implications which indicate to him that the Department of Labor is attempting to take from the Bureau of Mines (Department of Interior) the functions of that Bureau.”

Nevertheless, assistant director Jarrett continued his crusade and met with an FBI special agent in his USBM office in Arlington, Virginia. The FBI filed another report, and this time Jarrett laid the fire at the feet of the union: “Jarrett speculated that there was a militant type group in the union at this mine, which caused the company and the Bureau of Mines to be very cautious in their dealings with union representatives.”

When the federal government's
Final Report on Sunshine Mine Fire
was released in 1973, Launhardt disputed much of its content, including the following passages:

“The emergency escapeway system from the mine was not adequate for rapid evacuation.”

Launhardt considered that charge the most ridiculous of the purported factors, as it played out in Sunshine Mine or any other deep, multilevel mine. The poisonous gases in the air left no time for escape. Shaft repairman Robert Barker had been found with his arms folded behind his head, lying on some lagging, a coffee cup resting nearby. It was as if he was waiting for the smoke to pass, as though it was only a temporary inconvenience. Barker, like many others, had no idea there was any real urgency to evacuate.

“Top mine officials were not at the mine on the day of the fire and no person had been designated as being in charge of the entire operation. Individual supervisors were reluctant to order immediate evacuation or to make a major decision such as stopping the 3400-level fans.”

Launhardt agreed the evacuation could have been better facilitated, but he doubted Chase or Walkup could have resolved the issue of the 3400-level fans. No one knew how the fans would affect the atmosphere, because no one knew where the fire was burning.

“Company personnel delayed ordering evacuation of the mine for about 20 minutes while they searched for the fire.”

Many debated that charge. There had been a search for the source of the smoke, and confusion about who could make the call for an evacuation. Launhardt didn't find out about the smoke for at least a half hour, and by the time he dumped the stench, many of the men were already trapped. Launhardt supported the search. In order to determine which way to send his men out—through the Jewell or Silver Summit—the foreman needed to know where the smoke originated.

“Most of the underground employees had not been trained in the use of the provided self rescuers and had difficulty using them. Some self rescuers provided by the company had not been maintained in useable condition.”

It was that charge that hit him the hardest. It was the worst kind of finger-pointing because Sunshine was the first hardrock mine in the district, maybe in the country, using self-rescuers at the time. Neither federal nor state laws required them. Launhardt had brought them to Sunshine in 1963 because he thought they would be a good safety measure. Although testimony from many of the survivors indicated that some of the units were in poor shape, or completely unusable, Launhardt felt that there had been enough to go around. Without them, at least forty-three more men would have died.

“Mine survival training, including evacuation procedures, barricading, and hazards of gases, such as carbon monoxide, had not been given mine employees.”

Sunshine was a metal mine, not a coal mine. Launhardt had followed the letter of the law for safety training. He was also a realist. He knew the resistance the men felt toward the subject. Most thought they'd never need to escape a fire at Sunshine, because Sunshine wouldn't ever have one.

“The controls built into the ventilation system did not allow the isolation of No. 10 Shaft and its hoist rooms and service raises or the compartmentalization of the mine. Smoke and gas from this fire was thus able to move unrestricted into almost all workings and travel ways.”

Launhardt couldn't argue that one because it was a fact. But the USBM had a role in that scenario. The USBM ventilation experts didn't recommend such system controls following their 1971 ventilation survey.

And though the report had been the culmination of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of testimony, research, and analysis, it did not address what Launhardt considered the most important issue: Why did the Sunshine fire spread more rapidly and produce more toxic gases than a normal hardrock fire?

According to the
Final Report,
“a fire smoldered in the abandoned area, filling it with smoke before the smoke was expelled and detected. The sudden release of a large volume of smoke and toxic gases was not characteristic of the normal growth of an open fire.”

S
OMETHING WAS MISSING.
T
HERE WAS NO WAY A FIRE WAS GOING
TO
smolder in those sopping old workings, building an enormous toxic cloud, and go unnoticed. In early spring of 1973, the legal team connected the dots when a Minnesota pig farmer successfully sued a foam manufacturer after his sheet-metal pig barn became engulfed and killed his animals. The fuel that fed the blaze was the supposedly nonburning, self-extinguishing polyurethane foam. The foam sprayed on 3400 near the 09 crosscut in Sunshine Mine was nearly identical.

The insulating product had long been promoted by the industry.
Mining & Quarrying,
a trade magazine, reported in an August 1962 article titled “Knocks Fire Cold”:

“A revolutionary method of insulating and sealing passageways in coal and metal mines by applying sprayed-in-place urethane foam to exposed underground surfaces was demonstrated by the U.S. Bureau of Mines for the American Mining Congress in Pittsburgh. . . . Since the foam will not support combustion, it can be used to insulate combustible materials in the mine and makes possible the quick erection of emergency, flame-retardant curtain walls to localize an outbreak of fire underground. . . . ”

It turned out that polyurethane foam had a deadly past. In 1957 a fire in a British coal mine killed twenty-nine men. During the post-fire investigation, the polyurethane foam that had been used as a sealant became suspect when evidence indicated that the purportedly inflammable product had burned. At first the investigators zeroed in on the possibility that the foam had been improperly mixed, rendering it unsafe and flammable. Graham Wilde, head of the Mine Fires Section of the British Health and Safety Executive, conducted a series of laboratory tests and found the rigid foam could ignite; in fact, surprisingly easily. A report indicating the inherent dangers of the sealant was dispatched to the United States with a letter from Graham urging the USBM to join England and other western European nations in banning the foam for use underground.