Harvey Dionne hurried to locate its source. Gene Johnson and Bob Bush went the opposite way, to 10-Shaft, to alert the crew.
Dionne climbed up a lumber pile to peer over the heading of the raise, a clearance of no more than eighteen inches. He twisted his head and fixed his cap light onto the dark gap. Nothing but black. He strained to see behind the wall. It was like staring into the empty blackness of a schoolkidâs slate. He finally saw smokeâan enormous, undulating cloudâboiling behind the timbers. The source of the smoke was coming from the 910 raise. It had to be. Dionne climbed down, and he and Bush jumped on a couple of motors and went west down the drift, away from the smoke toward the Jewell. They met a muck train coming, and sent its driver back to close air doors while they continued on. Things were under control. Everything would be just fine.
11:30 A.M., M AY 2
Sunshine Offices
P ERSONNEL OFFICE ASSISTANT B ETTY L ARSEN, THIRTY-NINE, WAS A short, round woman with auburn hair and nerves of Jell-O. At lunchtime, Larsen and other office women left the administration building for the employee break room in the immense green sheet-metal-clad building in the middle of the mine yard. It was a quiet morning, with all the bigwigs at the annual shareholdersâ meeting. Not that anyone took advantage, but they savored the freedom nevertheless. The women noticed smoke coming out of Sunshine Tunnel, on the mountainside north of the mill complex. Smoke also came from the big blue steel stack over a seven-foot-wide borehole called Big Hole. It exhausted air from the 1900 level to the surface.
âIâve never really paid much attention,â one of the women said. âMaybe thereâs always that much smoke?â
Larsen didnât think so, but she wasnât quite sure. She looked up at the smoke, puzzled but unworried.
Larsen, whose sole office skill was typing a brisk 105 words per minute, was another of the South Dakota newcomers of the 1950s. Like so many, Betty and Duane Larsen went on hope and faith from the surging sea of prairie grasses to the dingy towns of the Coeur dâAlenes. Betty thought Kellogg was a dump, a smelly place with no lawns, unpainted houses, and dirt that wasnât even pretty like the black soil of the Dakotas. Even the Minerâs Hat drive-in, a replica of a hardhat with a working lamp as its omnipresent beacon, sat in a cloud of dust along the highway. Larsen also noticed that the scruffy men were pale-skinned. Farmers back home were clean-shaven and tanned from outdoor work.
âThese men look like convicts,â she told her husband when they first arrived.
âThat they do,â her husband said.
To a teetotaling Seventh-Day Adventist, Kellogg was one bar after another, with no shortage of customers. Back home, there were one or two drunks. Kellogg, she thought, was a town of drunks. Gambling, cards, and slot machines also reigned. And, fittingly, silver dollars were the favored currency. Some men lugged so many coins in their pockets that they nearly lost their pants. Before Kellogg, Larsen had never even
seen
a silver dollar.
By the time the office women finished their lunch on May 2, they assumed the fire was under control. Betty Larsen was sure that since there was nothing to burn down there, an underground blaze couldnât be a major calamity. When she noticed a company ambulance ready to go, someone told her that a victim of smoke inhalation was going to the hospital for treatment.
Thatâs too bad,
she thought. She hoped the fellow wouldnât miss much work.
Nine
A BOUT 11:35 A.M., M AY 2
Jewell Shaft, 3700 Level
A T TWENTY-SIX, J EWELL CHIPPY CAGE TENDER K ENNY W ILBUR was still waiting for a chance to apprentice as an electrician and get out of the mine before he was an old man at forty. After lunch Tuesday morning, Wilbur hung around 3700 kibitzing with sanitation nipper Don Beehner, as the pair did at that time nearly
Dionne climbed up a lumber pile to peer over the heading of the raise, a clearance of no more than eighteen inches. He twisted his head and fixed his cap light onto the dark gap. Nothing but black. He strained to see behind the wall. It was like staring into the empty blackness of a schoolkidâs slate. He finally saw smokeâan enormous, undulating cloudâboiling behind the timbers. The source of the smoke was coming from the 910 raise. It had to be. Dionne climbed down, and he and Bush jumped on a couple of motors and went west down the drift, away from the smoke toward the Jewell. They met a muck train coming, and sent its driver back to close air doors while they continued on. Things were under control. Everything would be just fine.
11:30 A.M., M AY 2
Sunshine Offices
P ERSONNEL OFFICE ASSISTANT B ETTY L ARSEN, THIRTY-NINE, WAS A short, round woman with auburn hair and nerves of Jell-O. At lunchtime, Larsen and other office women left the administration building for the employee break room in the immense green sheet-metal-clad building in the middle of the mine yard. It was a quiet morning, with all the bigwigs at the annual shareholdersâ meeting. Not that anyone took advantage, but they savored the freedom nevertheless. The women noticed smoke coming out of Sunshine Tunnel, on the mountainside north of the mill complex. Smoke also came from the big blue steel stack over a seven-foot-wide borehole called Big Hole. It exhausted air from the 1900 level to the surface.
âIâve never really paid much attention,â one of the women said. âMaybe thereâs always that much smoke?â
Larsen didnât think so, but she wasnât quite sure. She looked up at the smoke, puzzled but unworried.
Larsen, whose sole office skill was typing a brisk 105 words per minute, was another of the South Dakota newcomers of the 1950s. Like so many, Betty and Duane Larsen went on hope and faith from the surging sea of prairie grasses to the dingy towns of the Coeur dâAlenes. Betty thought Kellogg was a dump, a smelly place with no lawns, unpainted houses, and dirt that wasnât even pretty like the black soil of the Dakotas. Even the Minerâs Hat drive-in, a replica of a hardhat with a working lamp as its omnipresent beacon, sat in a cloud of dust along the highway. Larsen also noticed that the scruffy men were pale-skinned. Farmers back home were clean-shaven and tanned from outdoor work.
âThese men look like convicts,â she told her husband when they first arrived.
âThat they do,â her husband said.
To a teetotaling Seventh-Day Adventist, Kellogg was one bar after another, with no shortage of customers. Back home, there were one or two drunks. Kellogg, she thought, was a town of drunks. Gambling, cards, and slot machines also reigned. And, fittingly, silver dollars were the favored currency. Some men lugged so many coins in their pockets that they nearly lost their pants. Before Kellogg, Larsen had never even
seen
a silver dollar.
By the time the office women finished their lunch on May 2, they assumed the fire was under control. Betty Larsen was sure that since there was nothing to burn down there, an underground blaze couldnât be a major calamity. When she noticed a company ambulance ready to go, someone told her that a victim of smoke inhalation was going to the hospital for treatment.
Thatâs too bad,
she thought. She hoped the fellow wouldnât miss much work.
Nine
A BOUT 11:35 A.M., M AY 2
Jewell Shaft, 3700 Level
A T TWENTY-SIX, J EWELL CHIPPY CAGE TENDER K ENNY W ILBUR was still waiting for a chance to apprentice as an electrician and get out of the mine before he was an old man at forty. After lunch Tuesday morning, Wilbur hung around 3700 kibitzing with sanitation nipper Don Beehner, as the pair did at that time nearly
Similar Books
