Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917. Michael Punke

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СКАЧАТЬ to make their escape. The group climbed another 200 feet. By the time they reached the 2,200 level there were twenty-six men, now led by a man named Jack Bronson. Bronson, a shift boss, was a friend of Ernest Sullau’s.²⁴

      At the 2,200 level, forty stories above their starting point at the 2,600, Bronson told the exhausted men what they least wanted to hear—that they must keep climbing. Two men began to weep and said that they could not continue, but they rallied when the others urged them on. As a shift boss, Bronson would have known that there was a connection to the Badger mine at the 2,000 level of the Spec—a possible way out.

      Soon, though, men began to fail. Some likely collapsed from the effects of the gas; some stumbled in the crosscut or tripped on rail tracks. At this point, some of the men were probably without their lights. Falling down could easily result in falling behind, and in the darkness, in their weakened state, falling behind could mean death. Six men were missing by the time the main group made the Badger shaft. They rang for the cage, which came immediately. “I never saw anything look so good as did the cage,” said Jovitich.

      Remarkably, though, the young man did not climb aboard. The station tender asked for a volunteer to go back and find the missing men, and it was Jovitich who led him back into the gas-filled workings. “The smoke was bad and after I walked 500 feet my knees went out and I fell.”

      Jovitich woke up in a hospital bed. “I wish I had been strong enough to save the others.”

      Those men not fortunate enough to encounter Ernest Sullau or another experienced miner had to depend entirely on their own instincts. At the 2,200 level, for example, a young man named W. T. Wynder led a small group that first ran toward the Granite Mountain shaft. Others in the group included Wynder’s partner and “a Finlander” whose name is reported only as “Voko.”²⁵

      As the group came closer and closer to the Granite Mountain shaft, they encountered a wall of smoke and fumes. In Wynder’s description, “That cloud was black as night.” They watched as men in front of them “dove right into that wave of poisonous fumes and every yard we went it became blacker and more terrible.” Then the draft that pushed the cloud blew out their lanterns, casting the men into total darkness. They dropped to the floor, feeling for the rail tracks to find their way.

      Wynder realized that they were moving in the wrong direction. “Boys, she’s coming this way!” he yelled. “Turn back and we’ve got a chance!” Finally one of the men managed to light a match and Wynder was able to spark his carbide lantern. By this time, though, Wynder’s partner was gone. Apparently disoriented in the darkness, he had crawled in the wrong direction and was later found dead.²⁶

      Others too began to panic. “I quit,” said the Finlander Voko. “I cash in my checks.” One of the other men punched Voko “to liven him up,” and the remnants of Wynder’s group—including the Finlander—fled back toward the Speculator. Most made it to safety.

      Ernest Sullau was probably in the gas-filled workings of the mines for more than two hours. Though his precise path is unclear, it is estimated that the forty-eight-year-old covered more than three miles, “much of which was climbing up and down ladders.” He spread his warning throughout the lower levels of the mine and sent “at least fifty men to safety.”²⁷

      There are conflicting accounts of Sullau’s push for the surface. The earliest account says he was leading a group of men through a connection in the Badger mine.²⁸ A later, more detailed account says he was leading men through the High Ore.²⁹ Whatever his precise location, both accounts agree on one central fact: Sullau had a final opportunity to flee the mine, but instead turned back.

      He took this action fully aware of the potential consequences. According to a detailed story in the Anaconda Standard, three men grabbed Sullau and attempted to dissuade him from going back down, telling him it would mean death. But Sullau was determined to search for his friend Jack Bronson, the shift boss who earlier led other men (including the young Eastern European Mike Jovitich) up the long climb through the Speculator.³⁰ Bronson survived the fire, and it is possible that he was already safe on the surface when Sullau went back to look for him.

      On the 600 level of the Speculator, just after midnight, a debate took place that must have been repeated throughout the upper workings on the night of the fire: two men arguing about the source of smoke. One, a Balkan miner named Chris Vukovich, believed it came from nearby blasting. His partner, Louie Muller, worried that the cause was more ominous. “That’s not powder smoke,” he told Vukovich. “It’s gas.”

      Then a shift boss ran through, settling the debate with frightening certainty. “Run boys, it’s fire!”³¹

      Vukovich and Muller were two of the fifty-seven men working that night in the upper portions (between the 400 and 800 levels) of the Granite Mountain and Speculator mines. Thirty-one of these men—more than one half—would die, an even higher mortality rate than the lower portions of the mines.³² Though they were closer to the surface and farther from the source of the fire, the miners in the upper levels were in some ways disadvantaged compared to the men at the greater depths. The upper levels did not connect to adjoining properties—the most successful route to safety for the men below. The other disadvantage for the men in the upper reaches was that none of them had any idea as to the source of the fire, smoke, and gas.

      As for Muller and Vukovich, both initially climbed down a narrow manway ladder toward the 700 level. They most likely chose this direction because the 600 level had no connection to the Granite Mountain shaft, whereas the 700 did. Like so many others, they probably believed that the Granite Mountain hoist would provide their passage to safety. As they descended, though, the two partners and the other men with them encountered thickening smoke, ³³ pouring through the crosscut from the Granite Mountain shaft. “[T]he smoke and gas nearly suffocated us,” reported Muller. “Somebody said to go back …”³⁴

      There was panic on the ladder, with some miners seeking to go back up even as others piled down. In the manway as elsewhere, the men struggled to sort through the chaos, their responses as diverse as the number of miners in the mine. Some resigned themselves to death, begging stronger men to pass along notes to their families. Some shouted curses. Some whispered prayers. Most struggled forward, desperate to breathe again in the light of day.³⁵

      Vukovich chose to keep climbing downward, and like almost every miner who went from the 600 to the 700 level, he was later found dead.³⁶

      Whether through knowledge, intuition, or luck, Muller was among the survivors. Unlike his partner, Muller turned around and climbed back up to the 600 level, deciding to try for the 600 Station of the Speculator. As he ran toward the station through the 600 crosscut, he stumbled across a pile of seven bodies. Muller managed to carry three to the station before becoming too weak to go back.³⁷ Someone rang for the Speculator hoist. Unlike the Granite Mountain shaft, where fire burned out all wiring, the Speculator shaft still had electricity. At least one of the Speculator hoists, though it had not been in use due to shaft repairs, was still serviceable.

      A few minutes after they called to the surface, the hoist appeared. Muller would be one of the thirty-two men who were lifted from the 600 and 400 Stations of the Speculator shaft—the only men taken alive through either the Speculator or Granite Mountain shafts in the immediate aftermath of the fire.³⁸

      Two other men in the upper levels, unable to outrun the pursuing gas, showed the innovation that desperation bred. Their names were John Boyce and John Camitz. Like many others working in the upper levels, they made an initial effort to escape via the 700 level. Like a lucky few, they managed to retreat from the 700 before they were overcome.³⁹

      Instead СКАЧАТЬ