Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917. Michael Punke
Acknowledgments
There is a sign that appears to point persistently to a terrible explosion underground.
—HOROSCOPE PRINTED IN THE ANACONDA STANDARD , JUNE 5, 1917
Butte, Montana, was still dark when the cable crew arrived at the Granite Mountain shaft in the early morning hours of Friday, June 8, 1917. The men could see their breath as they worked in the cold, open air beneath the headframe—a hulking, eight-story steel structure that supported the massive weight of the hoists. The miners called it a “gallows frame” because it looked like a gigantic industrial version of the Old West hangman’s platform. Gallows frames dotted the sprawling hillside like Butte’s version of trees.
The official accident report does not list the names of the men on the crew that morning, but it is a good bet they were a motley mix—the no smoking signs that hung around the mine shaft were printed in sixteen languages. The report does provide the men’s job titles, titles that reflect the task before them: “four electricians, three rope-men, two shaft-men, and one hoist-man.”1
The worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history began, ironically, as an effort to improve the safety of the Granite Mountain shaft. Granite Mountain, along with its sister shaft, the Speculator, were owned by the North Butte Mining Company. The two mines were rarities—productive Butte properties not owned by the omnipotent Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Anaconda did own all of the properties that surrounded the North Butte holdings. Anaconda, indeed, owned most of the city and a sizable chunk of the state.
By the lax standards of the day, the North Butte Mining Company boasted a considerable reputation for safety. The cable crew’s work on the morning of June 8 was part of an effort to install a sprinkler system up and down Granite Mountain’s 3,700-foot shaft. The shaft was buttressed with chemically treated wooden timbers. In a fire, this highly flammable lining was the functional equivalent of a chimney made of wood. The new sprinkler system, though, was nearly complete. In a week or so, a shaft fire could be doused by simply turning a valve.
One of the few tasks remaining was to relocate a large electrical transformer at the 2,600-foot Station. “Stations” were cavernous openings at hundred-foot intervals and were the junctions between the main shaft and the hundreds of tunnels that branched out from it. The 2,600 Station, therefore, was 2,600 feet below the surface, or “collar,” of the shaft.
The transformer at the 2,600 Station stood only fifty feet from the wood-timbered shaft. Worried that an electrical fire could easily spread, mine officials had decided to move the transformer to a safer location—deeper inside the workings of the mine and well away from the main shaft. The electrical cable that connected it to the surface, however, was too short. The job assigned to the crew was to lower a long cable that could reach the transformer’s new location.
In the era before plastic, electrical wire was commonly insulated with oil-soaked cloth, usually cambric or jute. In industrial settings such as a mine, the cloth was then sheathed in lead for protection. The new 1,200-foot electrical cable being lowered into Granite Mountain was a full five inches in diameter and weighed five pounds per foot, putting its total mass at a staggering three tons.
The narrow five-by-sixteen-foot main shaft contained three hoists—side-by-side elevator cages that could be operated independently of one another. The cages were controlled by a “hoist-man” on the surface. Two of the hoists were dedicated to pulling up lodes of copper ore from the depths of the mine. The other cage, called a “chippy,” was used to transport men and materials. The men in the shaft’s various stations communicated with the hoist-man through a complicated system of electric-powered bell signals.
To lower the new cable into the Granite Mountain shaft, the crew planned to use the mechanical strength of the third hoist, the chippy. This necessitated the labor-intensive act of lashing the cable to the chippy’s lowering rope (the rope on which the cage itself was pulled up and down). As the first 500 feet of cable was lowered, the crew tied the cable and the lowering rope together with hemp lashes at ten-foot intervals. After the first 500 feet, the crew tied lashes every five feet to compensate for the ever-increasing weight.2 By the time the entire cable was tied to the chippy’s rope, nearly 200 lashes were in place.
The crew had worked for sixteen straight hours before the lower end of the cable finally came even with the 2,600 Station. Sometime before 8:00 P.M., the men were about ready to begin threading the cable toward the site for the new transformer when they noticed a problem. The bottom 200 feet of cable appeared to be “coiled around the hoisting rope.” Before snaking the cable into the 2,600 Station, the crew decided to make an attempt at straightening out the kinks.
One of the men came up with the idea of removing some of the lower lashings. The hope was that the three-ton cable, if freed from its lower bindings to the hoisting rope, would untwist itself—the way kinks unwind from a tangled telephone cord.
The details of how the crew went about releasing the hemp ties are vague. It appears, however, that two or more of the men scaled the shaft walls and began cutting or untying the lashings. Adding to the precariousness of their task was the fact that the hoisting rope was smeared with lubricant to help it spool and unspool more easily.
Whether or not the kinks began to unwind is unclear. What is clear is that as the men of the cable crew worked around 8:00 P.M. on Friday night, they noticed that the three-ton cable suspended above them was slipping. Then, in a heart-sinking moment, they realized it was falling down.
The crew made a mad scramble for cover and “had scarcely reached the safety on the station before the cable fell.” As they huddled in the 2,600 Station—which opened directly to the shaft—the men heard and felt the thunderous roar of the falling cable. It bounced and scraped for hundreds of feet along the timbers of the narrow shaft, ripping every impediment in its path. Air hoses and water pipes were pulled off their brackets, adding the high-pitched scream of twisting metal. Finally the cable became caught in the shaft, piling up in a giant, tangled clump between the 2,400 and 2,800 levels—above, below, and beside the cringing cable crew at the 2,600 Station.
There must have been a palpable pause when the crashing finally stopped, one of those suddenly quiet, postcalamity moments in which accident victims take shocked inventory of themselves and their surroundings. Eventually the crew moved hesitantly toward the shaft, their lanterns barely able to penetrate the thick dust thrown up by the falling cable.
The cable was ruined. The violent fall had scraped away half of the lead sheathing, exposing large sections of the oil-soaked cloth insulation. After they inspected the snarled pile, it was obvious to the men that the giant wire could no longer carry an electrical current.
By then it was 10:00 P.M., and the crew had been working for eighteen straight hours. In no mood to begin the difficult task of removing the ruined cable, they headed for the surface.
Burton K. “B.K.” Wheeler, Butte’s thirty-five-year-old federal district attorney, was a man in an unenviable position. Wheeler’s job was to enforce federal law, and Butte,