The Deep Dark Read Free Page A

with national and state labor agencies and the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) to ensure that safety regulations were in place. It meant seeing that equipment was up to date and miners were properly trained in evacuation and rescue techniques. Guarding miners’ lives was a crucial job because so much could go wrong. Government statisticians and mining district undertakers frequently acknowledged mining as the most perilous job
on or under
the earth. Some assumed the safety engineer’s position existed solely to meet government regulations, mitigate the risk of union complaints, and dodge civil lawsuits. Some mine managers considered it little more than a necessary nuisance. The workers themselves understood that there were ways to avoid injury, but they dismissed many of those measures. Many considered risk and danger essential to the job’s mystique. Launhardt, a bespectacled Goody-Two-shoes among his peers, believed that if he could get men to think before they blast, to wear safety glasses, to cool it on the horseplay, just maybe he could save a life. His biggest challenge in 1972 was the same as always:
How do you convince men that accidents are unacceptable and unnecessary?
For Launhardt, who had once studied to be a Lutheran minister, promoting safety became as important as preaching the word of God.
    There were many reasons for his vigilance, and all were damned good ones. Sometimes men fell down shafts so deep that nothing remained but bloody clothes and serrated splinters of bone. Rockbursts or airblasts, however, were the most feared of district hazards. Those occurred when the stone ceiling exploded under pressure and sent slabs of rock the size of camping trailers down to pulverize men into biological splat. Other times, it was the floor that gave way. The lucky ones were buried alive until someone could move two tons of rock to free them. Although Sunshine had its share, the district’s Galena Mine was considered one of the worst, if not
the
worst, for rockbursts. Anyone who’d worked there longer than a month experienced the sudden and frightening reaction of rock giving way to pressure. Old hands knew that as long as the rock was talking—making characteristic popping and grinding noises—they’d be all right. When it got quiet, that was the time to think about moving to a different location or taking lunch early. Whenever it was quiet underground, look out.
    In the battle being waged by men with jackleg drills against the fractured and folded metamorphic world of the underground, men frequently lost. Every man knew there was no guarantee he’d ever see daylight again.
    Launhardt knew some accidents had more to do with human error—little mistakes that miners made doing things they did right every other day. Veteran miner Stanley Crawford’s accident was a case in point. Crawford had been setting charges on some blocking in a shaft, as he’d done countless times. He set four fuses, but only three blasts rumbled through the mine. Crawford was confident that two had ignited simultaneously, thus obscuring the distinct sound of a fourth explosion.
    â€œI’m gonna go look,” he said.
    His partner didn’t like the idea. “Stay here and have a cigarette. We can check it after dinner.”
    But Crawford was impatient and insistent. As he bent closer to take a look in the smoky air, the charge ignited. It was the last thing he ever saw. His eyes were blasted from their sockets like a pair of soft-boiled eggs.
    Sunshine’s safety engineer knew the inherent reasons for Crawford’s mistake. The greater the danger, the more reckless men became. It was a mix of laziness, tempting fate for the buzz of adrenaline, and just plain ignoring the obvious. More men were hurt and even more died because someone decided to push something to a new limit. Miners sometimes took the extra step toward trouble.
Trouble could be a rush.
    Some health hazards were slower in