Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness by Swidey Neil

Author:Swidey, Neil [Swidey, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307886743
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

Mine rescue trainers work hard to try to break down the powerful “band of brothers” instincts that miners and people in similar high-risk professions tend to share. As noble as those instincts seem, they simply cannot hold up to the lessons drawn from more than a century of mine accidents. Government incident reports catalogued by the U.S. Mine Rescue Association show with depressing repetition what usually happens in accidents when workers focus on trying to rescue their comrades rather than getting themselves to safety. They die.

Take, for example, the Woodbine coal mine in southeastern Kentucky. In the summer of 1985, a four-man team of young miners spent the afternoon hauling coal, operating three “scoop” vehicles. Two of the miners, Robert and Ricky Bauer, were brothers. As the miner in the lead scoop penetrated an abandoned shaft, he was suddenly overcome. The three miners behind him rushed to his aid, working to revive him, only to lose consciousness themselves. Somehow, though, twenty-one-year-old Robert Bauer managed to regain consciousness. He dragged his twenty-two-year-old brother to an area of the mine where the air was better, then rushed back to try to rescue the others.

After a long period of radio silence, a separate rescue team headed into the mine. There they found an unconscious Robert Bauer cradling one of the other miners in his arms. All four miners were rushed to the surface, but only Ricky Bauer survived. An investigation determined that after the miners had penetrated the abandoned shaft, that shaft had acted like a vacuum, sucking the good air out of that part of the mine, leaving the men with the oxygen-starved air known in the trade as blackdamp.

Zeroing in on the instincts that take over during a crisis, one mine rescue trainer would frame his scared-straight talk this way: “Are you going to stay there or are you going to get yourself out? If you stay there, you are committing suicide. There is nothing noble about suicide. It’s immoral.”

• • •

Again, Riggs called over to DJ and Hoss. “We’ve got to leave them!”

Still, Hoss was the foreman of the crew. Despite his youth and occasional brashness, Riggs respected him, as well as the preternatural air of authority that seemed to match his imposing height. After suspending his work on Tim so he could quickly take everything in, Hoss let out his verdict. “We’re not leaving these guys.”

Hoss’s decision was so firm, so calm, so right, that it had a clarifying effect on Riggs. Despite what his brain told him, his heart agreed with Hoss. Instantly, he felt good about it.

Hoss turned to Riggs. “Get those rebreathers ready.”

“I’m on it,” Riggs replied, hustling to the rear of the Humvee.

Although the main and primary backup air supplies were now useless to them, the divers did have several other emergency devices. There were the bailout bottles that they each wore on their hips, which offered ten minutes of air. There were one-hour Ocenco self-rescuers that had been the sandhogs’ emergency supply, which Kiewit had loaned the divers for this job.

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