[ Music ] [ Music ] >> The Silver Valley of North
Idaho is a rugged place. The valley follows the
course of the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River which
includes canyons and gullies that branch off into the
surrounding mountains. Tall trees, icy springs, and
rugged terrain are common. This is a place of great beauty, but it also can be
harsh and unforgiving. Since the late 1870s when
gold was found in its streams, the valley has attracted people
with character to match its own, rugged people, adventurers
with strong backs who believe in hard work, and a
fierce independence needed to survive these mountains. Miners and loggers were
the first settlers. The mountains hid untold wealth and the miners were
determined to find it. Loggers provided timber
for homes and for supports in the deep mines that
were being developed. The rocks held gold and
silver, lead and zinc. Within 50 years, the valley
would become known as one of the richest mining
districts in the world. Tens of thousands of families
would live in the valley with over 100 mines
producing metals that flooded the
region with wealth. None shone brighter than the
Sunshine Silver Mine near Kellogg, Idaho. [ Music ] The Sunshine started as the
Yankee Lode in 1883, claimed and mined by two brothers from
Maine, True and Dennis Blake. Their claim located up a
gully known as Big Creek, just east of the town of
Kellogg, was different from other nearby claims. It was rich in silver rather than the more common
mineral galena, a heavy lead ore
mined in the valley. True and Dennis were
farmers and used their mine to subsidize their farm. They raised fruits
and vegetables in the rich creek bed
metals below the mine and made a good living
selling them to hungry miners
and their families. It wasn't until 1914 that
Dennis' widow, Hattie, leased the mine out and in 1918, the Sunshine Mining
company was incorporated. The company struggled for
several years as the price for metals rose and fell. In 1932, a bold gamble paid off. Scarce dollars had been spent
on exploring deep in the mine. Just when the ore
looked played out, the fabulous Sunshine
bonanza was discovered. And by 1937, the Sunshine Mine
was the top silver producer in the world, mining
over 12 million ounces of silver that year. The story of the Sunshine
Mine is the story of the mines and miners of the Silver Valley
and of Western Hardrock Mining. Conditions in the mine could
be brutal with humidity of 100% and temperatures deep in
the mine over 100 degrees. >> They said the
rock temperature of the walls was 112 degrees. And when we walk in there
in the morning and stuff, it was like walking
in the jungle because you would
have steam waist-high until you got your
fans all running again. >> The Sunshine, like many
of the high-producing mines in the Silver Valley, sat
atop an active fault zone. This made it possible for the
rich minerals to be deposited in the rocks and made it
very dangerous to mine them. The men attracted to this
work were a hearty breed, physically strong,
unafraid of danger, and independent to a fault. They worked hard
and played harder. The mines paid good wages to
those willing to work for them. Miners who worked in drifts,
raises, and shafts were known as ”gypos” and were
paid a production bonus beyond their expected day's pay. >> Back then it was super. It was really neat. Because you didn't
have any supervision, you didn't have any rules
really to go by, and you're-- whoever you worked with taught
you what you were posed to do. And the people underground
were, I'd say, a little on the wild side. They-- A lot of horseplay,
a lot of-- but I mean, everybody
worked real hard and the money was real super. >> I think that people played
hard, they worked hard, they made good money,
they spent good money. And you put up with the heat,
you put up with the air blast and things like that
because, hopefully, you'd be around to spend
next week's paycheck which would buy you an extra
case of beer or something. >> The Sunshine Mine
was the richest of the silver-producing
mines in the Silver Valley. By the time it closed
in 2001, it had produced over 360 million
ounces of silver. Its place in history, though,
comes not from its silver but from an infamous event that
no one believed could happen. May 2nd, 1972 was a
pretty spring day. One hundred seventy-two men went
underground on the day shift, expecting to do what
they had always done. The mine was huge
by any standard, spreading over two
miles east and west and over a mile north and south. The mine that had started
with an outcropping on the surface was now
nearly 6000 feet deep with working levels every 200
feet and hundreds of miles of old worked out areas
called Old Country by most of the miners. These areas were sealed off
from the current working areas by cinder block or timbered
walls called bulkheads or stoppings. Huge fans on the
surface and vent tubes or boreholes underground
moved air to the phases and
other work areas. Because the mine was so large, ventilation was a
constant problem. >> The Sunshine Mine
had a lot of leakage through ventilation
controlled bulkheads from the exhaust
back into the intake. So Sunshine followed
recommendations to use polyurethane
foam sprayed in place, rigid polyurethane foam
to seal those bulkheads and make them essentially
airtight, and of course that was done. That product, by the way,
was marketed as non-burning and self-extinguishing and safe
for use of underground mines. >> A system of track
mounted man trains and underground shafts
called winzes moved miners to their work areas which
were over a mile horizontally and nearly a mile vertically from the main surface
shaft called the Jewell. The 3700 level was the
main transportation level from the Jewell shaft out
to the number 10 shaft that provided access to the
lower regions of the mine. The number 10 shaft had four
compartments and two hoists. The largest was the
big double-drum hoist on the 3100 level that was
used to haul ore and waste rock from deep in the mine to
the 3700 and 3100 levels where it could be transported
by train to the Jewell shaft. This hoist had cages suspended
below the two main decks that could hold nine men each, but it was not usually
used to hoist miners. The men actually rode a
single-drum hoist called a chippy. This hoist was a four-deck cage that could hold 48
miners at a time. The hoist man for the chippy
hoist was on the 3700 level. The Sunshine used men called
cagers who stayed with the cage in a shaft and communicated
with the hoist man by a system of bells to make
sure the supplies or ore were hoisted
to the right level. On May 2nd, the men
took the man train out to the number 10
chippy hoist and were taken down to the many working
levels of the mine. Miners generally worked
in two or three men crews in remote areas called
headings and carried their tools and lunch buckets with them. Gypos didn't want to
waste a precious minute that could keep them
from making their rounds. They didn't stop working
if they could help it and even ate their
lunches on the run. >> When you're gypo-ing and
that's what I was doing, my partner and I,
we were gypo-ing. You're actually working
in a double pace speed, your speed is double pace. Try to get as much
done as as you possibly can within the eight hour period. >> The morning of May
2nd, two raise miners on the graveyard shift
had noticed smoke. This was not unusual. Ventilation fans or train
motors often had small electrical fires. After a blast, when the air was
thick with a smell of explosives and dust, it was hard
to smell anything else. >> Some of the guys said they
smell smoke, but Jim and I, we come out that
morning and neither one of us smelled anything. But then we were
really used to working and would shoot rounds
and go right back in. >> On the day of the
Sunshine Mine fire, I had worked graveyard. The night before, we
came out of the mine about 6 o'clock in the morning. As we came out of the number
10 shaft on 3700 level, we went by the Strand
substation. As we came by that
Strand substation, Glenn Shoop [phonetic], who
was one of the guys on our crew and actually the lead man of our crew asked me
if I smelled smoke. And I said, yes, I did. And Ray Rudd [phonetic],
who was the shift foreman that night had
just lit a cigarette, but he had lit it
with a wood match. And we just kind of
put it off to that. >> The day shift started
early at the 'Shine and most men ate their
lunch around 10:30 or 11. In some areas, it was
noticeably smoky, but again, no one thought this was
anything to worry about. By 11:30, however, it was obvious there was
a problem and a big one. Smoke was thick on
the 3700 level which was the primary
escapeway. It was coming down the
number 10 shaft and spreading through the lower
regions of the mine. >> The day of the fire,
I've been in the 4800 level and I came back up
to 3700 for lunch. I repacked my supplies
and went out. And as I got on the station, I've seen a cager
say, "See you." And they went down. And that was about
11:30 in the morning. I would say 10 minutes
later, you could hardly see across that station
because of the smoke. And from there on
in, it got worse. >> Shift bosses began rounding
the men up since no one knew where the fire was or
how serious it was. >> Dewellyn Kitchen
was my partner. A motorman came back and
told us, "You better come out because," they said,
"there's smoke up out here." So I told him, I said, "Well, we
better get out of here because," I said, "this guy
came back after us." So I said, "They're going to
have to send the [inaudible]-- just send me back here again." You know, and I said,
"We don't need that." So we took off on the motor
and we got to 15 raise. And it was a solid
wall of smoke. I mean, just white. So we sat there and decided if
we're just going to go back. And I told them, I said,
"Well, if we go back," I said, "they're going to
send somebody else." And I said, "The
switch is almost got to be all open for us." So I said-- because
we couldn't see. I told them, I said, "Let's just
put it one point and let it go." >> The men gathered at the shaft
stations on the different levels and waited for the cages to
come and take them to safety. In 1972, there were no
regulations for hard rock mines that required miners to
either wear self-rescuers to protect themselves
against carbon monoxide or be trained in
how to use them. The Sunshine was one of
the few mines in the area that even provided them,
but they were stored at the shaft stations on
different levels of the mine. They were kept in cabinets
near the first aid stations, not with the miners themselves. As the men gathered
at the stations, they were already having trouble
breathing because of the smoke. Unfortunately, few knew that the
invisible carbon monoxide was the biggest danger. >> It became smoky, so we went out towards the station
wondering what the heck was going on. And Virgil Bevs [phonetic]
was my shifter at the time. He come out to the
station, got on the phone. And he was talking on
the phone for a while. I could hear what he said. Finally he says, "Go
back and get everybody out of their working place." We had a motor crew there
and my partner and I. So we started going to
the other working place. We went and told them,
"Get out the station." When you came out
of the station, the smoke was coming
from the east side. It was getting real thick,
real thick and heavy. So most people tended to
wander off the station where there could
have been fresh air. We were-- We stayed on the station hoping
to get a ride out. We were there quite a while. We'd send guys up station to
see if anybody was there or not. Finally, a cager came down. He wasn't really a cager,
he was a pipe fitter. He volunteered to cage that day. >> As we're going
there, you know, everybody was getting…
coughing and hacking and then stuff like this. >> Your problem is seeing
because when the smoke is so thick, sometimes you
absolutely can't see your hand in front of your face. And you put your light down,
take your light off and hang it down close to your feet so you
could see the track to keep from getting lost
where you're going. >> It was so smoky. You put your hand like-- out like that and you
couldn't even see your hand. Your like, in your light. It was just thick. >> My partner and I, there was
this little box of self-rescuers up on the walls that nobody
could-- knew what to do. So we-- my partner took in-- took the box down and got these
half hour self-rescuers out and started handing them out. Some of them, they couldn't push
a button to get them activated because they were rusted out. >> And I told Ketch
[phonetic], I said, "There was some self-rescuers
laying there," I said, "Grab one of them." And we tried to punch
the buttons on them and you couldn't punch the
buttons so we had to smack them with a wrench to
get them working. So we got the self-rescuers
on and stuff, but then again, you take it out because, you
know, I mean there was smoke. Nobody was thinking
CO. There wasn't a clue. >> Greg Dionne, a 23-year-old
pipe fitter was working that day. He was trained as a cager and when the skip finally
arrived, he was on it. >> Greg came down and the smoke
was so thick he couldn't see and he had these self-rescuers. They look like a tuna fish
can that has a little knob in the center that you pushed
it and it broke the seal so you could breathe through it. Well, he handed them out
to everybody and said, "Push that little
knob and stick them up and don't take them off." He says, "They will get hot." So I grabbed mine and pushed
on it, I sucked on it. Put my nose plugs
on, suck on it. I said, "This thing
is no damn good." He said, "You got to break it." So he took out his pipe
wrench and went around and broke everybody's seals so
we could breathe through it. He said, "Now, stick them
on and don't take them off." So he stood by the shaft,
it's OK, the skip's here. And he started pushing guys down
the shaft and it was so smoky, I wasn't so sure
the skip was there. I was glad when I stepped out
that my feet hit something. But he packed us in there
as tight as he could. There was no gates on it. This was the double-drum skip. He put more on there than
you should but that's fine. He moved it nice and slow. We all got situated. He says, "You ready?" And we said, "Yup." And we went up. Greg Dionne took the
people off of 46. The way I understand it,
he skipped the 48 level because we told the crews on
48 to get back to the borehole. He went to the 5000 level, got
a few people off the 5000 level, sent them up, and Greg
Dionne did not make it out. I went to school
with Greg Dionne. He was a good friend of mine
all the way through school. Greg was a pipe fitter. His normal job,
but he was an experienced cager. He knew we were in
trouble, he volunteered to help get people out. He knew where the
respirators were. He got the respirators and he
went down and did what he could. And I honestly believe
[inaudible]. >> I told Ketch, I said,
"Let's go over by the shaft." So we got over by the shaft, it
was smoky over there and stuff. And we had there
self-rescuers in. And the cager, if I remember
right, was Greg Dionne. And he said, "Get on." And it was smoky enough. I said, "What are
you talking about?" He said, "Get on." And then I realized there
was a cage set in there. So I got on the cage and
I reached back for Ketch. There was nine-- there
was going to be 13 of us on a nine-man cage. And I reached back for Ketch
and I pulled him on and-- >> And it wasn't him. >> No. I grabbed some kid that
just got back from Vietnam. >> The day of the fire I was
just working on 4400 back with the number 10 shaft. I was in there, I shrink stope
with my partner and we were told by the motor crew that was
pulling a muck that we were to evacuate the mine,
that the mine was on fire. And I thought that could
be really odd, I really did because I thought, "Fire? What could burn here
in the mine? I mean we're in a
hard rock mine. There's-- The only
wood that's really-- that you really see is
just what's in the drift and I don't see anything
burning." And then we walked through
an air door and as we opened up that air door, it
was so thick, the smoke, you could barely see--
what was in front of us, just maybe a foot
at the very most. >> There was no panic. No, everybody was calm. That's half-- the reason
I think half of them died. Nobody was worried. Everybody knew everything
would be fine because a hard rock
mine does not burn. >> I didn't have a self-rescuer. They had some old
ones in a locker. They were beating on
with pipe wrenches trying to get them to work. Don Beehner, the guy that I give
him credit for saving my life, had a flashlight, looking
battery, about so long, yah high with a mouthpiece
on it. And he took it out of his mouth
and put it in mine until I got to where I can breathe again. And then I felt like I
better give it back to him because it was his anyway. And I gave it back to him and
I got some rags and soaked them in water and tried to
breath through the rag. >> The 3700 level was
the main travel route from the number 10 shaft
to the Jewell shaft. The man train was on this level
and the miners were familiar with the route it took. The 3700 level, however,
was one of the first levels to be overcome with
deadly smoke and gasses. The miners who were
belled [phonetic] to the 3700 level did
not survive the trip. >> The shaft crew had already
called and summoned for the skip to come down and get us out of
here, so they had the skip come down and they had gotten on the
skip and my partner had gotten on the skip and I
got on the skip. And my partner was
twice as old as me. I was 25 and he was
50, and he had asthma. And so he carried those
inhalers, he carried two or three inhalers with
him in his dinner bucket. And he forgot to get his dinner
bucket when we got on the skip and he wanted to take a
shot through his inhaler because the smoke was really
bothering his asthma bad. And he said-- He mentioned
to me, he goes, "Oh," he says, "I forgot my bucket." Well, I knew he had laid his
bucket down on the station, so I stepped off the skip
to go get his dinner bucket for him because-- and then the
others can return to the skip. Well, when I stepped off
the skip, there's this-- I didn't know that at
the time that this is where Jesus Christ
took a hand of my life. And I stepped off the
skip and I went over and I got his dinner bucket,
and I went back to the skip and three other fellows
had gotten on the skip when I stepped off, and
that filled up the skip and there was no room for
me to get on the skip. So the skip was belled
away to the 3700 level and those individuals got off on
3700 and everyone of them died. >> The men waiting below for the
number 10 chippy hoist waited in vain. The hoistman had been overcome
by the smoke and did not respond to their desperate calls. The 48-man chippy hoist
was out of business, leaving only the single-deck
double-drum as an escape. >> So finally the skip come
down to take the crews out, the crews that were there. Over there, we filled the
skip up and my partner was on that skip and I said,
"There's not enough room for me to get on here." He says-- I said, "Go ahead
and I'll catch the next one." He says, "No, you're
not going to, not going to catch
the other skip, you're getting on here with me." >> Who was your partner? >> Gerald Anderson [phonetic]. And he says, "No,
you're going with me." So he reached down, the skip
was on, it had muck on it about like this and [inaudible]
pulled on muck the chippy or the double-drum
and it was slanted, so I just stuck my feet
in there like this. And so he swirled his arms around
and held me in like this all
the way going up. No doors on the skip, just
wide open from 5000 to 3100. And here we was, and then
Ernie Bailey [phonetic] was on that skip with me and the
smoke was coming down through that shaft so bad that it just--
it felt like it was just going to burn your eye
right out of you. So I took him, and
Ernie Bailey says, "Can I have a bite of that?" He was talking about
my self-rescuer. I said, "Yeah." I gave it to him, he
stuck it in his mouth. And we got by. When we hit 3400, the smoke
was-- it would-- had changed. >> Communication
underground was a problem. There was a single
telephone system with 13 separate phones located on the different
levels in work areas. Shift bosses throughout the
mine were frantically trying to reach the surface to get
information on what was going on and how they could
save their men. >> The phone system was back, In them days were
just old battery hand cranks, anybody in the whole system
could pick it up, listen to, and that was a lot
of the troubles because everybody started at the same time very
excitedly firing updates. We got smoke here, smoke
there, and all this when it first happened that
they really didn't know for sure where it was. >> The shifters didn't
leave that time because they still
had crews down there. They took responsibility
for the whole crews. And they weren't--
They wouldn't leave until their last man was out. So they remained, tried to
help, tried to direct people. And they didn't make it. There was, I believe, there was
a lot of heroes in that fire. >> Most of the men who
survived were those who were hoisted
to the 3100 level. Very few of the miners had
ever been to this level. It was a maze of hall
roads and side drifts where men could be
lost or trapped. >> None of these guys
knew how to get out on 31, nobody knew where 31
drift aid would come down, we took the man train down
because the man train back to 37 and 10, they never been out 31
drift, 31 was old haulers drift that have many ins and outs. And so I said as we're going along,
I'm telling them where we're at so that, you know, kind
of giving them encouragement, getting, you know,
"Come on, let's go." And told them when we got to 5
shaft and it was really boiling, whatever, and I said,
"Well, we're, you know, we're at 5 shaft, we're halfway
home, you know, keep on-- " but at the same time,
my lungs were just burning and my eyes are burning
and you can't-- and your feet feel like lead because you can't hardly
pick them up and you keep-- and the smoke keeps
getting thicker and thicker until finally we're--
finally we got out to 4 shaft and then the fresh air hit us. >> I've worked on 3100 so I knew
my way around on that level, but many of those fellows
did not know the way around. In fact, I think
there's one other fellow that knew that level. So between the two of us,
we led those guys out. Nobody ran, but we walked out,
we were in smoke till we got to 4 shaft, and then the
smoke-- the air just cleared up. It was miserable. Nobody passed out
or nothing, I mean, we were all standing upright. We were helping those who
would seem to have problems, but we all made it out. >> We went up to 3100 and
they instructed us to walk out to the Jewell station
which was a mile away. And Clyde Napier
[phonetic], an old-- he was the chippy
doctor at that time. And Homer Benson [phonetic]
and I started to walk out. When you think about it, though, we did more staggering
than walking. And I kept thinking
if Clyde falls down, we'll grab him and carry him. But all the poison
gas was down low. And if he had to fell down
and we went after him, we'd probably all been there. So-- And they were dying just
five minutes behind us maybe, maybe not that long. The guy that kept me alive
on 37, he put backpacks on a timber truck and went
back in, that's when he died. >> And that was Don Beehner? >> Don Beehner. >> Don Beehner. >> The Sunshine Mine had
brothers, fathers, and sons, uncles and in-laws, all
working together underground. Del Kitchen had several family
members underground that day. >> Then I came back and then
sat there and watched for people that they brought out. They brought seven off
at 3700 that were dead. And then the foremans and the
supervisors didn't want us to go and I told them that they
weren't going to stop me from doing and I was
going to do it anyway because I was concerned
about my family. My dad was there and my
brother was still underground, both of them. And-- But when--
what I come through, I knew that they wasn't
going to come down-- out. When-- And, you know, there's
really something that I have to tell these people that all
we can do is hope and pray that they're all right, that--
yet you know they were dead. And it was hard for
me to do these things, even to my own family. >> The Sunshine had a mine
rescue crew commonly called a helmet crew. Many of the miners on the crew at that time didn't take it
too seriously, after all, a hard rock mine
couldn't catch on fire, so why would you
need a helmet crew. >> We took it, the course,
as a way to get overtime and then it was something
that that it was good to know, you know, how to be able
to operate under one of these machines at the time, but we never thought
we'd ever have to use it. And that was the farthest thing from your mind is the hard
rock mine catching on fire. Your biggest fear was rock
falling on you, air blast, or something of that
nature, but a fire, no, no. >> Bob Launhardt, the safety
supervisor of the Sunshine, had been on the mine that
morning for an inspection. He'd come up around 11
and after showering, was sitting down to eat his
lunch when he got the call that there was a problem. >> I never got my first
bite because about the time that I had opened
the dinner bucket, I received the phone call
from the shaft foreman, Tom Hera [phonetic], stating
that there's a fire in the mine, they wanted to bring the helmets
to number 10 shaft on 3100. I didn't put my mine
clothes back on, I simply-- I put my mine boots on, my mine
belt, and grabbed a hard hart. And then my mine rescue training
told me to do one more thing, I went over to the
mine rescue room and obtained a mine safety
lamp, a flame safety lamp, and a Dräger gas detector,
and some detector tube so I could check for
gases from the fire. >> The Jewell shaft was
the primary intake airway for the Sunshine. As Bob and the others went down
the Jewell, they had plenty of fresh air coming
in behind them, but as they move toward
the number 10 shaft, they found thick black smoke
and some other coworkers. >> When I got down to
the 3100 level, the-- several people asked me,
"What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" I'm going to take this apparatus
back to the number 10 shaft. "We're going to with
you," they said. And there were three other
people who joined me. Don Beehner was one, Larry
Hawkins [phonetic] was one and Jim Tingler [phonetic]. So those three people,
and they were all people who had been trained
in mine rescue. At least one of them,
I found out later, had been in very
heavy smoke earlier on and consequently had already
had a significant amount of carbon monoxide poisoning. We never got to number 10 shaft. When we got back into
I-- where I could see, there was a crosscut from
our right that was spewing or carrying just a real heavy, dark, black smoke. So I signaled the motorman
to stop and I told everybody, "Put on your reading
apparatus, we're getting into some heavy smoke." And I said-- I told Larry, "Go
slowly because I don't want to run over anybody
that's coming out." And we got back perhaps, I
don't know, 600 feet, 800 feet, moving slowly in really
heavy smoke and we came across another individual, it
was Byron? Schultz [phonetic]. And he was obviously distressed
in many different ways. Well, while we were preparing
the apparatus to put it on him, Don Beehner took his face
mask off and extended it out and said, "Here, breathe this. This is good air." And in a matter, it seemed,
it was not a very long period of time, you know, a
matter of 10 or 15, 20 seconds when he
collapsed, Don did. And the only thing that I
could conclude, I think he was so toxic from breathing
carbon monoxide that he didn't really
know what he was doing. >> He was the only casualty, [inaudible] casualty
during the fire. And I think there's a
lesson to be learned there from mine rescue men, and
that's if you become a casualty, you're not going to
help somebody else. And to put your mask, your
apparatus on somebody else at that point is
not a good idea. Carry other oxygen equipment
and put oxygen on him, yes, but don't give up your own. >> News was spreading
through the Silver Valley that something was
happening at the Sunshine. Wives and mothers, children
and friends and coworkers began to gather in the mine yard. They had no real news,
but they could see for themselves the thick
smoke pouring from the mine. >> I remembered I was driving
truck and I come to the yard and we have a big exhaust
fan up on the hill kind of like a smoke stack on it. I looked up there and just
smoke was rolling out that, then word started getting around
over the fire underground. Nobody knew how bad
it was or anything. >> Miner's wives were no
strangers to bad news, they understood the dangers
their men faced everyday, but it was obvious that this
was not a small problem. >> It was in a beautiful day
out and Don was afternoon shift. Somebody came down the
canyon and said the men that are working afternoon
shift will not be coming home because they are going to try to rescue the men
that are underground. I was terrified and I
didn't want him to return, but he informed me that he said,
"If you-- If I was down there, you would want somebody
come after me." And I said, "That's true." >> Families prepared to
stay at the mine site until they knew what
had happened. Community organizations
including the Steelworkers Union, the Red Cross and churches brought
food, blankets and cots. >> There were people camping out
there for the first week or two until they got the bodies out. It was-- I don't know
how many people there, it was probably 100 people
out there at any given time. And Sunshine was feeding them, giving them blankets,
whatever they needed. They used the warehouse there
for kind of a center for handing out sandwiches and lunches, and
they were handing out lunches for the guys going
underground and it was pretty, fairly chaotic around here for at least the
first couple of weeks. >> The other mines in
the area were notified. The Bunker Hill, a huge
mine, a nearby at Kellogg, had a lot of experience
with fires and had a well-trained
helmet crew. >> That way of the Bunker Hill
had just finished a fairly-- a very extensive mine rescue
training where not only where we're just putting the
apparatuses on and walking around with them, they actually
put us through obstacle courses. So with that in mind and our
management let the Sunshine management know early
on that we were prepared if they needed any
mine rescue help. And we were mobilized
that afternoon. We arrived midafternoon, I'm
thinking 3:30 to 4 o'clock or something like that. >> The Sunshine's
afternoon shift was beginning to report in, no one really knew
what was going on underground, but rumors were flying. >> We just thought it might be
something that might have burnt up like put something on a
commission like a big intake fan or something like that where
it wasn't get enough air in the mine or maybe a hoist
or something to that effect, it was nothing that
you thought-- it was nothing where
you'd ever like to be at. You know, a hard rock mine,
what do you got to burn? And I think that's
what everybody thought. Rock doesn't burn. >> Most of their bosses and
staff were down underground, and it made it real bad at
that time too because our check out in and out system was
basically the boss' record book. And the boss had the record book
so there was no real way to know who was down there or
who made it out or what. >> We went through a
real quick crash course. We needed people as
soon as possible. I'd say they trained us
thorough, but it was fast. You paid real close attention. And from that point on, I
think that's what made a big difference in my life
because people got to realize that any one person
can make a difference. And I think that--
I think I did. I feel I did. I felt I did something
to help somebody. >> Back then they
have the McCaas, the older type self-contained
breathing apparatuses. And they was clumsy and
bulky and we-- I just had-- I wore them outside. And then training was-- then
was back then was real minimal, it just what they needed to do. A lot of people didn't know
what to do at that time. >> In 1972, mine rescue
equipment was primitive. The Sunshine Mine used McCaas,
which weighed over 40 pounds and provided only
two hours of air, severely limiting
rescue efforts. Despite these limitations,
men were trained, and the first helmet
crews went underground and found deadly smoke
and the bodies of miners. >> I've not seen that sort
of a situation in my life. There were-- People have
died on the way out. There were 30, 40 bodies
before we could even get to the hoist room on 3100. It was very difficult
for the Sunshine people. It was in some respect,
it was-- we were lucky to come in
from outside and not know and not see our friends. >> They knew that
there were five people that hadn't made it out, there
were right beyond that point. So they went back with
timber trucks and stretchers and they brought those five
people, those five bodies out. So it was kind of
a sad first day. >> As the rescuers worked their
way toward the number 10 shaft, they feared the worst,
no one close to the number 10 had survived. Miners were found at
the shaft stations, in hoist rooms, and
along the tracks. The lethal combination
of carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases had
made it impossible for anyone to survive, but they
did not give up hope. As the days wore on, families and company employees
kept there vigil. The Silver Valley was united
in the face of tragedy to support those who waited. >> When anything happens
here in the Silver Valley, when any disaster strikes, I
don't know where people come out of the woodworker
or whatever, but they're there immediately to
try to give you support and just to let you know they're
thinking of you, whether they know you or not. >> What I recall the most
during the fire itself was how everybody was grouped together,
was here to support each other. Everybody pulled together
and supported the survivors or the families that was sitting
and waiting for so long to find out if their loved one was
coming out or not alive. >> I think we'd-- I mean,
that's a long time ago, but I think we heard that
that fire was going on almost as soon as it started. I remember I had kids in my
room that their dads work there, and they were frantic. And what do you say? What do you say? You just go on and you give
them love and respect and hugs and we didn't have any
counselors at that day. I love them. When they cried, I cried
and I hugged them some more. And we all got through it. >> Our family's situation
was a little bit different than the others. I mean, when my mother
went to the mine, they knew men were dead. They already knew it. And I can't remember if
it was May 3rd or May 4th, they brought my dad out. My dad was the last one brought out at the mine before they
quit bringing out people and just strictly went
to look in for survivors. And lot of those people,
it was a long, long wait. We knew he was dead
fairly quickly. And I think that was
probably the hardest part for the whole family, sees the
ones that just waiting, hoping, their loved one would
be found alive where we knew it was
too late for my dad. >> The rescue effort was heroic. The primary goals
of the rescuers were for to keep themselves
safe and at the same time, secure the mine and
find survivors. The fire was still raging and conditions underground
remained deadly. >> What we were doing were
primarily sealing off 3100 so that we can get back to
the station in fresh air. The idea was to get-- move
your fresh air bases close as you could to the fire to
primarily, reconnaissance to determine if there were any
survivors and as important, accounting for all
the missing people. >> They did it real well here, making sure that when one
team was down, doing something that was in contaminated air, that they had another
team backed up. >> Rescuers were
in constant danger. As the fire burned through
timber supports, the mine began to collapse, severing electrical
and communication lines and destroying the
ventilation system. The polyurethane foam lining
the drifts and bulkheads burned, sending out thick
clouds of deadly gases. The heat was unbearable. >> One of the things
that happens with polyurethane foam
combustion is polyurethane in the situation
like that, the-- it actually gets the
timbers burning and it burns in what they call
a fuel-rich mode. Fuel-rich meaning, there's
more material burning than there's oxygen available
to support the combustion. So the combustion
will-- it will have-- it will increase and decrease
as the oxygen is made up. Well, in the combustion gases
of the test fire in England, carbon monoxide range
from three to 7%. Oxygen was down to
as little as 1%. Temperature ranged as high
as 2250 degrees Fahrenheit. We had-- As fresh air base
was established at 5 shaft, and then we made an extension
walk, used a-- we set up a cord, a cable and fall and-- have
to strung it out [inaudible]. And we went back to the
cable shop and we found in the hoist room
and the stuff, on 37, we found everybody
was dead there. We turned around and came back
out and went back to 5 shaft, and then went back up. But when we got at 37,
we heard a loud boom, we thought it was an air blast. What had happened at that raise, right there where we had
a role set up for our-- the lifeline, that
raise has fell through. It was burning up above
there, and when it burned and fell through, it burned--
there was not even ash left. It sealed off the drift when
we-- if we'd have been there, would-- they wouldn't
have found no sign of us, they would even found ash of
us, we're totally cremated. And we were just lucky that it
didn't fall while we was there, you know. >> The rescuers worked
toward the number 10 shaft from two different
sides of the mine. Through the Jewell
shaft on the west, and through the Silver
Summit are Consil Mine on the east side
of the mountain. The Consil, connected to the
Sunshine at the 3100 level and was maintained as
a secondary escape way and ventilation exhaust. As the rescuers made their
way deeper into the mine, they found no one alive. >> It was like a nightmare
because once we come to the end of where we had fresh
air, you then had to go into the contaminated
air but you also had to go into the 10 shaft. On 10 shaft station and
then the hoist room, and then around on the
drifts, there was lots of dead people, lots
of dead people. Now, you got to remember,
I'm only 23 years old. And-- You know, I think
if I had it all to do over again I was wanting
to help save, you know, my friends are trapped in the
mine, so it's very important for me to get trained and get
down there and be healthy. My friends, it's extremely
hard to pick the bodies of your friends up
because that was a very-- which is tough, it was
a tough thing to do. >> The number 10 shaft
was the only way to get down to the deep levels of
the mine and neither one of the hoist was working. Before rescuers could get
into lower levels to look for survivors, they had to
get the hoist running again. This was a huge job. >> The power was screwed up on
the hoist on 31 and we had to go in and take new electric
line in and hook it up. And we was in a hurry
to do that thinking that there might still
be somebody alive on the lower levels, so we
didn't bother with trying to move the body south, so we
had to step over all the guys that were on 31 that
had died on the way out. >> [Background Music] As the
rescuers frantically worked to restore hoist then
look for survivors, the days were passing. Unknown to them, two men were
alive down on the 4800 level. [ Music ] [ Pause ] Ron Flory and Tom Wilkinson
were partners working in a raise several thousand feet
away from the number 10 shaft. They had been told
about the fire and went out to the shaft station
to see what was happening. >> At that time, I really
didn't care [inaudible]. We just said I would
put a little smoke and that'd be no
problem, we could get out. >> We didn't believe that
there's a fire in the mine. Think about it, what can
burn in a hard rock mine? We all stood around the
station, rang for a cage, and then everybody
stood around talking and waiting for the
cage to come. Then it-- the smoke get
heavier and heavier. And our self-rescuers
started getting warm and hard to breathe through, so we
pulled the self-rescuers out and breathed around them
till they cooled down and then put them back in. Tom and I had run out to
the main drift and was going to open the air door and see
if that would take the smoke that way instead of
back to where we was at. So we're trying to get that
opened, then Tom passed out. And I carried him back to
the motor barn where the rest of the guys were and we
put him on top of the motor and took him back to where
there was fresh air-- well, we thought there
was fresh air earlier and there is still
fresh air there. One guy took the motor out
and tried to use the telephone and apparently the rest of
them got on the motor and tried to get to where we was
at, didn't make it. They got within,
you know, probably, 150 yards to where we was
at and they all perished. >> And the next thing I knew
was I was back here in the drift and there were--
Ron was on there. I'll be-- I'm all right. Are you all right? And then I came to and I'm-- Ron started walking back down
the drift towards the station, and then pretty quickly come
back and he told me, he says, "Tom," he said, "they're
just laying all over." So at that time, him and
I both went out there and Dick [phonetic] was on the
motor and he was slumped over. And we grabbed Dick and we
dragged him off the motor and put him on [inaudible]. We tried to revive him and
man, and it was nothing. We knew he was dead. >> Tom and Ron were not trained
at mine rescue, but the sight of their coworkers bodies
convinced them they needed to stay where they were
and wait to be rescued. It was a long eight days. >> We weren't at the borehole,
we were probably 100 yards from the borehole, but we could
see a wall of smoke coming back that part and then it was
going into a side drift and down the 5000 level. And so we just more or
less stayed right there. We knew as long as
we [inaudible]-- as long as that wall
of smoke stayed there that we would be safe because
we had fresh air coming in behind us. >> And I think the first
day, Ron and I we tapped to the water line there, so we
had water with us all the time and we drank a lot of water. We tried to kept water
in us, because it was-- it's pretty warm down,
I'd say, it's probably around 100 probably, at
least 100 degrees anyway. >> On the surface,
crews from the US Bureau of Mines were working
at two main efforts. They were training miners
to work under helmets and they were convinced
that there was a chance that some men had survived if they had only
found their way back to the newly finished
number 12 borehole. This borehole had been
completed just the week before and was located about 1500
yards from the number 10 shaft between 3700 and 4800 levels. Fresh air was forced
through it from the surface. If anyone survived,
it would be there. Bureau rescuers borrowed
a torpedo capsule from the Atomic Energy
Commission and prepared to send Wayne Kanack [phonetic] and Dan Morris [phonetic]
down the borehole. This was a dangerous
thing to do. The borehole was unlined
and barely large enough for the torpedo to fit through. If any rock broke loose,
anyone inside would be trapped. Tom and Ron were beginning
to wonder what was going on. They still had no idea
how bad the fire was or how many people were dead, they just knew they had
been waiting a long time. >> We're out in the smoke seven
different times the time we was down there. And we didn't know until later that we thought we wet our
t-shirts and put our t-shirts over our mouth that
that would-- but-- help save us, we didn't
find out till later that that did absolutely no
good, made us feel like it did. >> We was always
worried, you know, wondering what was going on,
but we never really panicked. I think when-- one of them--
as you get down, you know, when you get, you [inaudible]
might be losing or something, the other guy was there
to talk [inaudible]. >> No, we never actually
give up hope. We-- Like I said
earlier, we knew they had to come down to get us. And we were-- we just hoped that they would get there
before it was too late for us. >> On May 9th, Ron
and Tom were talking, discussing their situation when Ron thought he
saw a light flashing. >> It was in the afternoon, the
day we've-- we were rescued. And I think Ron and I was-- we were both there
laying what they call the [inaudible] boards. And we've been talking. And Ron was the one
who've seen the light first and he seen reflection
off the wall. And he told me, he said,
"There's a light down-- coming down the tunnel." And I-- And that's where
the borehole was back there. And I said, man, he's
really losing it this time. I said, "Don't be nuts." "No," he says, "there's
a light." >> They had sent a
crew down the borehole. And we didn't know until
after they found us, the day before they were
within 100 yards of us and they didn't know
it and wedidn't know it. >> The survivors were
brought up to the surface, rescuers brought stretchers but
both men refused to be carried. When they came out
of the portal, the gathered crowd went wild. >> When we come out-- got
to the main station there, they want to put us on a
timber truck and push us out. And Tom and I both,
"No, we walked in, we're going to walk out." So they-- we got
a guy on each side of us they let us walked out. >> And I remember when we
first got to the portal and the open doors, and
the light just hit us and people just started
clapping hard. And I just couldn't imagine a
lot of people were out there who was cheering us on. I just-- It's hard to believe. Especially after -- they had already knew that they lost somebody
in their family. >> When we come out of the
portal and saw the lights and we just more or less put our
heads down to shade our eyes. And both of us walked past our wives, we didn't see them, they reached out and grabbed
us as we were walking by. We got a little flack
on that, the-- >> Tom and Ron were taken to the
local hospital for observation. They were very hungry. Cecil Andrus, the
governor of Idaho was there and made sure they got cold
beer with their dinners. >> And I remember Governor
Andrus and who else it was, he sat down and asked
what we want. Of course, we wanted a beer. So Governor Andrus said
just [inaudible] down and gets us six [phonetic]
pack of beer. >> Back at the mine, the news that two survivors
had been found spread to the rescue crews
working underground. They were thrilled and the good
news renewed their efforts. >> Man, it was just-- it
something else to see two of your coworkers
come to the surface. And it was something that you
just didn't think was going to happen after what
you had seen and you'd knew how
many did-- had gone. And that-- And for them
to come up and that-- it was a miracle, you know. >> For four more days, rescuers
struggled to gain access to the lower levels of the mine. When they reached
the 5200 level, they finally accepted the fact that no one else would
be brought out alive. >> When we come down
the shaft, the 5200, OK, what we really know now
is this is the last level. This is, you know, and
this is what I'm feeling. This is what's in my heart. This is the last level and I'm
really, you know, I'm wanted it, you know, I'm wanted
someone to be alive. I'm wanted-- that I'm
apprehensive, you know, and I'm scared and
I'll never forget this. It looked like the guys were all
just standing around in group, because when we went
there, they were just-- they were piled on
top of each other, like the gas just hit them and they just all
died just immediately. You couldn't recognize people. We had to unpile them
to take care of them. >> Recovery of the
Sunshine took many months. Areas of the mine were unstable after their timber
supports had burned. Tie supporting the rail
tracks had also burned. Electrical lines
and components use to power the hoists
all had to be replaced. Many of the surviving
Sunshine miners worked in the recovery effort just
as many were laid off and had to find work elsewhere. When the mine finally reopened,
seven months after the fire, it was obvious that the
Sunshine had changed forever. >> Before the fire and
stuff, you had bosses that were-- they were miners. When they told you something,
you can understand it. They knew what they
were talking about. And you lost the men
that were training. After that, you could say that if you put a hard
hat on, you were a miner. And you would have accidents one
right after another and I think that it had cost Sunshine. It really had. >> I believe that my
primary inspiration came from that Sunshine fire. I lost a lot of friends. I lived for years after that
fire with the visions of my-- the bodies of my friends and
the condition of the bodies when we brought them out. And I would wake up at
night crying and I did it for a long time, and it
has taken me a long time to get that out of my mind. >> When the mine reopened, some of the Sunshine miners
could not bring themselves to go back underground. Others returned because it
was the only life they knew. >> It gets in your blood. I mean it really does. It's in your blood. It's something that somebody-- my relations always tell me they
told me after the mine fire, they said, "Why did
you go back there?" I said, "I just had to." I had to go back. It's as if something that's--
gets into a miner's mind, they tell you, you got to back,
so you go back and you go on. >> The Sunshine mine
fire was one of the worst hard
rock mine fires of the 20th century in America. Ninety-one people
lost their lives, but many lessons were learned. Few people denied that hard
rock mining is safer now than it was before the fire. The Metal, Nonmetal
Health and Safety Act of 1977 was a direct
result of the fire. It finally put some teeth
into the safety regulations for hard rock mines and mandated that every miner receive
adequate training before they are ever sent underground. >> The Sunshine fire changed
mine safety and health. It changed regulations. It increased regulations and certainly increased
training requirement. For example, in my rescue
training we had before, we would train for eight hours a
year, now it's 48 hours a year. New employees might have a
few hours of safety training. Now, if they're inexperience, they have to have 40
hours of training. >> Back then our people, our mine rescue crews
did not train only about once a year
and that was it. Now, we train four times a year. We also-- We train in smoke. >> After that, the
safety training took on a whole meaning, you know, the guys started
actually asking questions in the safety meetings
and stuff. The guys didn't know
underground. If the rescuer got hot, it was
working, and when they get hot, they would jerk it
out their mouth and two seconds later
they were dead. >> The cause of that fire,
they made a lot of changes that I think it really
helped mining. For one thing, the
hoistmans all got-- the hoistmans all have
a breathing apparatus in the hoist room with them. And they set out continuously
to make sure it's in good shape. And everybody carries a
self-rescuer with them. And we've had extensive
training on them, use of them. A lot of those boys I
stacked up had self-rescuers in their mouth, but they
didn't know that when that thing got hot, I
mean, it was probably-- it might have been told to
us in class, but you have-- either you don't pay attention or you have a tendency
of forgetting. A lot of miners are
hard of hearing. >> You know, the concept
was rock don't burn. And there was no refuge
chambers in at all, but now, we have refuge chambers that are
quite well supplied with water and air, and all have
phones and everything else. >> And now it's set up
where the training plans, you were properly trained
before you go underground, your first job when
you go underground is to learn all your escape
routes before you ever start on a job, you know the way out. It goes back to kindergarten,
when we take our school kids to kindergarten, the first
grade, what do they do? They have fire drills. We do too. And I think that that
has helped a lot. Mines in general have really
stepped up their ventilation. They try to make it where
they have the capability of shutting doors, turning off
fans, and isolating anything that would happen so
that people can come out. All our escape routes
are sign up-- set up so that no matter which way you're escaping
you're not going to come out through the smoke like
we had to, you'll be escaping into fresh air all the time. >> One of the hardest lessons
taught by the Sunshine was that the impossible
was in fact possible. Survivors of the fire worry that
miners may become complacent, believing as they did, that
a hard rock mine cannot burn. If this happens, another
disastrous fire is inevitable. >> I have long been
afraid that we're going to have another disaster. I believe that we're-- we've
set ourselves up for it, history repeats itself. And God, I don't want to see
a bunch-- miners killed again, particularly due to a fire,
I mean for Pete's sakes, that's something
that we can prevent. >> I believe I learned an
awful lot from that fire. I believe it put
more responsibility in myself instead
of somebody else. Right now with the
education I have on mining through the years, I
know I am not going into an area unless I know
I'd get back out of it. I'm not going to do a job unless
I know I can do it safely. It's just-- It's not worth it. >> I will-- I have a
message for the companies. And ask that don't
become complacent, keep your mines clean,
keep them organized, make sure your mine rescue
teams are trained well, make sure every individual
that goes in that mine is trained
well and the use of, not only the self-rescuer, but
on how to get out of the mine. And there is many, many times
I've interviewed people in mines that don't know the escape ways,
that truly don't know how to get out of that mine if
a disaster happens. And remember if that happens,
it's black, it's smoky, they can't see, there
is confusion. Train them well,
you'll save lives. >> The men who survived
the Sunshine fire and those who worked on the rescue and recovery efforts will
never forget what happened in May of 1972. The Sunshine Memorial
located at the bottom of the Big Creek Canyon
just off of I-90 in Idaho, Silver Valley reminds
everyone of the high price paid by our nation's underground
miners. >> A lot of people went
through a terrible, terrible problem because--
and this was my sisters and-- mostly my sisters because I
was the only boy left then. But I had to be there for them,
for my uncle, for my aunts. And I couldn't mourn like they
did because I could help them, but I couldn't do it because
I had to be there for them. And I maybe wished that I probably had done
something a little different that would help me,
but I never want to-- I would never want to
go through that again. >> Well, you know, that fire
had a big impact on this mine. And in this area here is--
I mean, you know, every-- here you can smell death. I mean, in this area, there
were flowers for the graves and, you know, for-- it
was unbelievable, you could even smell
it in the air. I mean, it was kind of, I
don't know, sad, really sad. >> Well, it was just
hard on everybody. You know, it was hard
on me as you can see. I remember I went
home and I just cried. But it was a big
shock for everybody. And I think everybody had
the same feeling I was. I wasn't all by myself. All the other rescuers, all
the people were, you know, it was like, you
know, it was just-- everybody was heartbroken. It's just like anything
else, you just got to-- you just keep going on. >> The Sunshine Mine closed
forever on February 16th, 2001. It had been the premier silver
producer for our nation, operating for 115 years. As the miners left the mine
after their final shift, they left behind a mine that
provided fabulous wealth for our nation, a good living
for its miners and a harsh, if invaluable, lesson to
those who ignore the dangers of underground mining. [ Pause ] [ Music ]
On the morning of May 2, 1972, 173 miners arrived at the Sunshine Mine to start their work day. Surface and underground foreman took charge of activities while principal operating officials, who would normally have been present, attended the annual stockholders’ meeting in Coeur d’Alene. Shortly before midday, two electricians began shouting warnings when they smelled smoke shortly after leaving their shop. Unable to locate the source of the fire, they alerted the foremen. Men were sent with verbal warnings, but most miners only became aware of the blaze when the smoke entered their workplaces.
The fire was located on the air intake side of the mine, circulating deadly carbon monoxide throughout the main airways. Many of the exits were blocked by smoke and only a few men could be hoisted out at a time. Working under dangerous conditions, rescuers evacuated as many miners as they could, but after eighty men were hauled out, the hoist operator died. After the hoist man’s death, only two more miners were rescued.
By the time rescue personnel arrived at 2:00pm, ninety-one miners had died from smoke inhalation. The rescue crews attempted to locate and extract any survivors, but in the end they could only recover bodies. The cause of the fire was thought to be the spontaneous combustion of some refuse near scrap timber, according to The Bureau of Mines. The Sunshine Mine disaster was the worst mining tragedy in the Idaho’s history.
Will have to give this a watch. My stepdad worked there back then. As a kid I always imagined the guy in the memorial statue was holding some kind of huge rifle.
My dad started his mining engineering career at the Lucky Friday in the late 80s, there's a monument/statue dedicated to the miners who died if memory serves me correctly.
Hey guys. I used to work in that Mine, along with some of the survivors. A ton of the kids I went to school with lost relatives in that disaster. I got out of mining due to loosing so many friends to work place accidents or cancer from the desiel smoke. Mining is a wild way to make a living. I don't suggest it.
I love these documentaries. But I do wish it was made today so that I could follow all their stories on a PC generated map. This is hard to understand.
Interesting first half but I feel like they missed to explain what had actually happened, what was it that caught fire? Why did the foam burn?
Thanks for the share. Good documentary!
Welp that was a good hour spent thanks op for the documentary