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Remember your first time in a cave or an underground mine? Now, think back
to the moment when all the lights were turned off.
Probably your first response was to strain to see in the total darkness, looking
for shapes and shadows, anything to reassure yourself that that you could see
something. We humans take in 80 percent of our sensory information visually.
Seeing is important.
Probably your immediate second response was the realization of the volume of
rock and soil over your head. You were reminded, in the darkness, that you were
beneath the surface of Earth.
Then your rational side kicked in, and you asked yourself: This cave has been
here for thousands of years, right? Surely it is stable, you thought. Mines
are all carefully monitored by federal agencies, with high safety standards,
aren't they? This is safe, isn't it? After all, when was the last time that
a cave-in or collapse was reported on the evening news?
Probably, this internal argument between reason and fear, light and dark, air
and dirt, freedom and burial didn't last long. You turned on your headlamp or
struck a match, and continued exploring. But what if the lights didn't come
back on? What if the exit route was blocked? What if the unthinkable happened?
Springhill 1958
The unthinkable did happen when the Springhill Mine in Nova Scotia, Canada,
collapsed in 1958. The collapse and the individual and collective fates of the
miners is the topic of a remarkable new book, Last Man Out: The Story of the
Springhill Mine Disaster, written by Melissa Fay Greene and released in April
by Harcourt. The story is a strong reminder of the implications of "what
if…?"
The "bump" happened on Oct. 23, 1958, in Springhill, Nova Scotia,
Canada. As Greene writes, "At 8:06 P.M., the mine seized up, and coal came
crashing up through nearly all the open spaces in the underground maze. The
disaster of [Mine] No. 2 came not as a cave-in. Instead, the rock floor heaved
upwards. From an oceanic depth, a ball of fiery gas threw off its stone layers
… The deepest stone floor rose faster than an elevator. It smashed into
the floor above it, and the two stacked together, hurtled up into the third,
like granite dominoes falling upward."
A few miners staggered out of the tunnel. A total of 75 perished. But 19 men
survived in the total darkness for nearly nine days until they were rescued.
They survived through the failing lamps and then the darkness, the smells of
gas, decomposition and human waste, the lack of food and water, the confined
space, the fear and uncertainty about any hope of rescue, and, in several cases,
serious injuries. All of the miners were changed forever. But they lived. They
survived.
As families waited for news in the days after the "bump," they hoped
— and feared — to hear the words that marked the end of the rescue
effort. A miner's son remembered waiting for news of his father after a 1956
explosion at the Springhill mine: "So that's how folks were told their
loved ones are dead …. They didn't come out and that's it. If he's not
out by the time they call 'Last man out,' he's not coming. That's how you find
out."
Last man out
Greene includes some of the stories of the aftermath of survival. Even before
the rescue process was complete, an opportunistic political aide in Georgia
invited the rescued men and their families for a vacation in the new beach resort
of Jekyll Island. This publicity stunt, intended to get some international press
for Georgia tourism, seriously backfired. The last trapped miner to exit the
cave-in site — the "last man out" — was black. The state
of Georgia was led by segregationist governor Marvin Griffin. Instead of advertising
the balmy breezes and sparkling sand on Jekyll's barrier island, the media coverage
of the survivors' visit focused on the distinctly different treatment of the
white survivors (at the resort) and the black one (in a trailer, at the southern
tip of the island).
Another major source of information about the Springhill disaster is a publication
of the National Academy of Sciences (Disaster Study No. 13, 1960), Individual
and Group Behavior in a Coal Mine Disaster. A psychologist and a sociologist
interviewed the survivors and tried to understand the impact of isolation and
stress in confined spaces. The research was expected to be relevant to human
interactions in trying situations: in underground shelters (remember, the Cold
War was very real in 1958), in submarines and perhaps, one day, in spacecraft.
What the research found, though, was that the behaviors seem to be unique to
the individuals who were involved in this disaster, and the generalities are
less clear. As with most situations, crises bring out true character. As the
saying goes, "under pressure, we become more like ourselves." This
was true of the miners, and it's a simple but important lesson.
Each of the 19 men who survived the mine collapse was changed in profound ways
by the experience. Some felt survivors' guilt. Some fell into deep depression.
A few tried to change the courses of their lives. All suffered from the devastating
economic impact of the subsequent mine closure. And they all had a renewed appreciation
for some of the elements of life that might otherwise be taken for granted:
family, fresh air, sunlight, music and "a simple glass of tap water."
After time below ground in a cave or a mine — whether for 20 minutes or
nine days — fresh air and light are particularly sweet. "What's important"
can be remarkably clarified. It's a useful reminder, and our perspective can
be changed by events far less catastrophic than the ones that affected the men
of Springhill in 1958.
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