From the Vaults: Deep Down Dark

The first time I was underground in a working mine was in the spring of 1974. Eleven of us crammed into a thirteen passenger van and left Marquette to take a geological field trip around Lake Superior. Organized by Dr. John Hughes, our first day of travel took us all the way to Sudbury, Ontario. We spent two nights in a dormitory at Laurentian University and the better part of two days touring geological sites of interest. Donning our helmets and safety vests didn’t register as ‘dangerous’ to us until we got the safety briefing that followed. We were about to take an elevator 2,300 feet below the surface to tour the INCO Nickel Mine. On the long ride down, one of my fellow students said they were trying to NOT think about how deep we were descending. I thought to myself, “Imagine doing this every day,” but I didn’t say it out loud.

We emerged in a large underground cavern that was bustling with activity. Trucks, earth-movers, and miners were busy at work as we were directed down a small tunnel some eight feet in diameter. One thing got all of our attention; a sudden pulse of air that we felt coming from somewhere ahead of us. “Don’t worry.” our guide said, “That is just the pressure wave from one of the tunnel ends they are blasting. We won’t be anywhere near that area.” We ended up in another chamber that had been blasted the day before as the guide explained how they go about mining the ore body. We got a little nervous when a large drilling rig with many lights came down the same tunnel. It looked like some prehistoric techno-dinosaur and we were in its way. When it turned in another direction, we were a little relieved. By then we had forgotten how deep underground we were. With the tour completed, we were more than happy to be topside once again.

A few days later, we were heading back toward Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario before we headed north and west around Lake Superior. We spent our third night on the road at the Elliot Lake Uranium Mine where we spent a night sleeping in well appointed cabins near the mine site. The trip 1,800 feet down at Elliot Lake was a bit different. Similar safety equipment was distributed, but this time we were loaded into an open bed transport. The guide giving instructions told us we would be driving down a mine tunnel with switchbacks not unlike a mountain road. “If you like your arms, please keep them in the vehicle at all times. The hauler brushes up against the mine wall at times and if your arm is between the vehicle and the rock, you will suddenly become short

handed.”

When we reached the bottom of the mine, we were ushered into what looked like a college lecture hall carved into the side of the tunnel. We were given more safety information and a brief history of uranium mining in the Elliot Lake district before we got to see the working area of the mine up close and personal. I was looking forward to sharing what I learned with my father and mother when we got back. Before he left Wakefield, Michigan to join the Michigan State Police, my dad had spent time working underground in the iron mines in Gogebic County. Dad had a couple of close calls during his mining days. The second event involved a large section of rock ceiling crashing down just before he would have been passing that area driving a motor pulling ore cars. All he could do was sit in the dark and wait until the rescue crew came to find him. He said it didn’t alarm him much until the first guy approached and said, “Oh, Ed, we thought for sure you were dead,” which started him thinking about a less hazardous career in police work.

Where did all of these underground memories come from? On her latest trip to visit the Eugene, Oregon branch of the family, my wife found a book entitled Deep Down Dark by Hector Tobar (2014 – Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) that she had found in a St. Vinnie’s store. The extended title will give you a clue where the mining memories came from: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. The event in question happened in August of 2010 and captivated the world for the 69 days the miners were trapped underground. During that time, they decided that if they survived, they would only tell their story as a group so all could share what profits might come from such a publication. Later, it was decided that Hector Tobar would be the author with whom they would share the story of the San Jose Mine.

The San Jose Mine is located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile. It is a foreboding place and the mine workers travel from as far as a thousand miles away to work there. The mine employs an A and a B shift and each shift is divided into two twelve hour shifts per day. The A shift miners work for seven days on and are off for the next seven days when the B shift miners take over. The mine was founded in 1889 and has supplied steady employment at a good wage for generations of locals and others who come from all over Chile. Charles Darwin had visited this area in 1835 and had witnessed a volcanic eruption, survived an earthquake, and observed seashells located a few hundred feet above sea level. Darwin deduced the minerals found in this area were the result of a process that would, in a hundred years or more, become known as the

Theory of Plate Tectonics.

The mineral belts in the Andes Mountains are a direct result of magma created when the Pacific Ocean crustal plates are pushed under the block of continental crust known as South America. This activity created zones of superheated, mineral rich water that was forced toward the surface. As it cooled, it deposited the minerals dissolved in this broth at various depths in the Earth’s crust. The process is the same as those that created the copper, silver, and gold deposits found in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The closest town, Copiapo, serves as a home base for the miners who commute to work in the mine with a larger number of miners living there year round. The San Jose Mine was opened when the demand for copper soared but the area had also seen boom and bust gold and silver rushes. Exporting saltpeter used for nitrate based explosives also predated the world-wide demand for copper.

Author Tobar tells the San Jose Mine story through the eyes of the 33 men who would find themselves trapped in the lower reaches of the mine. He recounts how each of the A shift miners came to work at the mine and particularly how their normal seven day shift began that fateful day.

The day begins with them being driven more than 2,000 feet below the surface on a series of switchbacks in the access route called The Ramp. The depth of the mine causes the temperature and humidity to be very high and the trip to the bottom takes nearly an hour. At mid-day, they are transported back to the surface for lunch before resuming their activities underground. It is just after 1:00 PM as the miners gather near a safety shelter called The Refuge when their lives changed in an instant.

Those working in the mine were used to hearing noises as the mountain settled over time. This time, it was different. Mario Gomez was sitting in the cab of his truck on Level 44, the deepest section of the San Jose, as a loader filled his truck. As he began to drive to the surface, “He advanced only a few hundred feet or so up a steep section of the Ramp when the tunnel around him began to fill with a dust cloud. This isn’t especially worrying, because he’s seen it happen before, and he tries to push the truck through the cloud, but it gets so thick he can see only a few feet in front of the windshield. Gomez is in danger of crashing against the wall, so he stops and opens the door and feels the wall – it’s straight, not curved, and he gets back in the cab and points the steering wheel straight and goes faster, driving blindly until (shift boss) Luis Urzua appears next to his window, gesturing for him to stop and get out. Gomez lowers the window, and at that

moment he is assaulted by a deafening noise, the memory of which will haunt him in the days, weeks, and months to come, causing him to weep when he remembers it. He hears the rumble of many simultaneous explosions, the sound of rock splitting, the stone walls around him seeming to crack, as if they might burst open at any moment.” Others working at various locations experience the same sensations but don’t yet realize exactly how dire their situation has suddenly become.

The men who had gathered at the Refuge on Level 90 were waiting to be picked up for transport to the surface for the mid-day meal (the top of the mine starts at Level 720 with the numbers decreasing to the bottom at Level 40). When the rumbling began, they tried twice to escape on foot only to be driven back to the safe room carved into the tunnel wall. They told Tobar, “The solid rock of the mountain transformed into a breathing, pulsating mass. The ceiling and floor of the Ramp became undulating waves of stone, and the mountain hurled boulders that emerged from the blackness of the tunnel and roll and bounce downhill, each a lethal weapon aimed at the miners. The sound of exploding rock feels like machine gun fire aimed at them. Another blast coming down the tunnel picks up the lightest miner, Alex Vega, and lifts him right off the tunnel floor. Others are knocked over and fall to the floor of the tunnel.”

When the initial chaos settles down, Urzua orders them to get into his truck and they begin to drive toward the surface, navigating around the debris littering the Ramp. They continue past Level 150 to Level 180 where they find the Ramp now impassable. They begin walking up the ten degree slope until they approach Level 190 were they come to the source of the problem. The Ramp is completely blocked by a solid mass of grey rock, smooth and impenetrable. They would later learn the slab was 550 feet tall and weighed 770,000 tons, twice the weight of the Empire State Building. This mega-block had broken off in one piece. Weeks before, cracks had appeared in the Ramp at Level 540 and the miners felt this was where the break had begun.

The mine had smaller shafts cut between levels to allow for air to be pumped to the lower reaches of the mine. These shafts were supposed to have ladders to be used as escape routes in an emergency. Exploring the shaft at this level. They were able to go up far enough to realize that the entire Ramp was blocked on all the levels they could reach. Their only recourse was to retreat to the Refuge on Level 90 and assess their options. There was a small cache of emergency rations at the Refuge that could sustain them for a few days. Water could have been a bigger problem but the large storage tanks used with the drill rigs would sustain them even though it had some

sediments and oil mixed in with it. Their biggest obstacle besides the mega-block imprisoning them was fear. The older miners who had seen rescue operations at other mines thought it might be a matter of days before they would be found but the total blockage of the ramp was not a normal situation.

As word of the mine’s collapse spread, the families began to travel to the site. The company security people were asked to keep them outside the main gate where a small tent city began. People from all over Chile sent food, firewood, and tents to aid those at the encampment during the harsh southern hemisphere weather. The government’s Minister of Mines visited the site and reported what he found to the President. Normally the mine’s owners would take charge of the rescue operation but in this case, the President told the Minister they would be directly involved. Countries around the world offered assistance in materials and technical support.

The first and most obvious question was, “Are any of them alive?” All communications were cut and the first rescue teams found the same problem when they attempted to reach them by the Ramp or the bore holes between levels. The Ramp was totally blocked and the boreholes were unstable as the mountain continued to shift and settle after the collapse. The only way to find out what happened to the men below the mega-block was to drill a 4.5 inch hole to the lower levels. Nine separate drill rigs set about this task – drilling that deep would be kind of hit or miss and they had no guarantee any of them would be able to reach the lower levels.

In the first hours and days, the trapped miners realized they had no way of escaping on their own. They organized a system to sharing the few rations they had at a daily ‘meal’ that became a meeting/prayer session each day. At first, they thought the sounds of drilling were just figments of their imaginations until some of the attempts got closer to their level. Water flowing down the passage ways was a clear sign that drilling of some sort was taking place. Frustratingly, the drilling sounds would get closer and then veer away as the drill bits seemed to have minds of their own. Near misses were of no help to the 33 men who wondered if they would ever be found.

The heat and humidity were relentless and even after scrounging batteries from the trucks and machinery to recharge their miner’s lights, near darkness was their constant companion. Some would begin writing diaries or good bye letters to their families, others seemed to spend the endless hours doing little or nothing. As the rations were cut even further, the unmistakable signs of starvation began to affect them all. As a group, the 33 tried to keep a hopeful attitude but privately,

some were beginning to think they were spending their last days in their already sealed tomb.

In Part 2, we will pick up the story as their captivity in the San Jose Mine passes two weeks.