So that's what they did.
Every half hour, Reverend Green would walk around the church, stopping to talk, to tell someone where to get help, how to notify someone who wasn't there, offer support to the visiting clerics, and check in the back to see how all of the church ladies were getting along. He didn't have a lot to worry about. The groups of women were self-organizing. They agreed on shifts to support the Baptist core group, with relief coming from all other quarters. He stuck his head in the back rooms, and observed them for a moment. It was more diverse than it had ever been back up-time. The Protestant denominations were well represented, as well as support from both of the synagogues in town. There was even a fledgling humanist society represented, and those three people were in the back, working hard.
He leaned against the doorframe and took a moment to watch this miracle. This group of people had become a community, far more disparate than any West Virginia town could ever be, and yet it still functioned almost the same way. Good people looking out for good people. He smiled inwardly. After all, isn't that what a community is supposed to be? Come together in times of need, despite differences. Answer to the common threat, defend the common good? Here in the back room of his Baptist church, were people from different times and faiths, together. Side by side at the sinks and the ovens. Hauling out the garbage, cleaning the countertops.
His inward smile turned quietly outward, as he realized that even in the darkest tragedy, there was good.
From that, he took strength.
* * *
The leader of the mine rescue team was a coal miner named Hank Jones. He had been part of a rescue team back up-time. In his mid-fifties, he was still in good shape and was still an active coal miner. Experience had taught him that he should expect something like this someday, and knew that he would have to have a team to back him up.
The typical rescue team is five men. Hank had been training with a group of down-timers he personally selected. He'd hoped to be able to give one of the men a team of his own and expand the training, so that there would be a backup. But there hadn't been time to do so. Never enough time.
Hank and the team were ready to go in. Stacks and Larry had wanted to shut down the fans, shut down everything before they went it. Hank knew better, and there was a heated argument about what to do. It was critical to keep the situation underground stable, to not change the conditions and potentially create new hazards. It was a basic rescue team procedure. Hank's job as a team leader—the team leader—was to take charge.
He had to assert himself. When the rescue team is called, they own the mine and everyone else works for them. Mine owners, maintenance, management, everyone. There were some Swedes from the army, a couple guys that tried to take charge with a national defense posture that Hank also had to squelch. He was in charge. That's what happens when you call out a team.
Normally he wouldn't assert himself that way. He would hang back, learn who everyone was, take opinions, and collaborate. But this one was personal, for him and everyone at the jobsite. Larry Masaniello was taking it particularly hard and it could be affecting his judgment, Hank decided. But Hank didn't call Larry on it in public. He asked for a meeting off to the side, and focused Larry on supporting Hank. And the families.
"Keep these guys off my back, Larry. Let my team do our job down there. Keep the army out of this; that's the last thing we need. We brought them into the disaster planning as a courtesy more than anything else. Help me with those assholes. Focus on them and focus on the families. Have you delegated anyone to speak to the families over at the church?"
Larry shook his head. "No. That has to be me." His eyes began to cloud with tears. Hank could see him struggle, and then smile. "Funny, we never picked anyone for that position in the event of an emergency. Sorta like we didn't think it would happen."
Hank grabbed Larry's shoulder. "You know it's bad. I know it's bad. But at least be honest and open with them. Don't give them a lot of hope, but—well you'll know what to do. Just be the man that you are. It's all you can do."
The five-man team was ready for the job. They had trained and practiced, sometimes on their own time, sometimes by being paid overtime for the long hours extra they put in. They had the best equipment, including the extra-bright battery cap lights and flashlights. But for four of the men, it was their first real rescue mission.
As they approached the lift with the thin wisps of smoke streaming out, Hank spoke. "All right, you guys. Are you ready for this?" He looked each of them in the eye as he looked around the huddle. Each man met his eyes and nodded. Hank looked for uncertainty and saw none. They were going to have to depend on one another to a degree that they had trained for but never actually experienced. Satisfied with their silent answers, he proceeded.
"Step one is to re-establish communications. Since we don't have any more phone wire, we'll have to trace and repair what we find. We have practiced that in our SCBAs. We should be able to splice the wires within two minutes even with the tank and air mask of the SCBAs. That's what we'll do. We think most, if not all, of the men were at the west face. It's the deepest part of the mine and the furthest away. Since we don't have the ability to put down a full borehole, we're having the well-digging truck try to hit that part of the mine. They will be able, maybe, eventually, to get an air sample. If the improvised bits work, and if it digs a straight hole and doesn't miss. We'll take readings for carbon monoxide and methane every one hundred feet of travel, and stay within sight of each other at all times. Nobody gets out of sight, not unless we plan for it, and all members are aware.
"After we get the phones working and after we understand the mine atmosphere, then we can start looking for survivors." Hank realized he swallowed that last word. Survivors. Based on what he saw and what he knew from the past, it was unlikely that there would be any survivors. But the first team in was always a rescue team, seldom a recovery team. And he intended to keep it that way, until he was absolutely sure.
They stepped onto the lift and gave the signal to the operator. They went down slow, taking air quality readings as they descended, not using their SCBAs. It was smoky, but breathable.
The next hours would be painstakingly slow, as they repaired the phones, established communication, and began the advance down the main tunnel.
* * *
It was three in the afternoon when Larry pulled his pickup truck in front of the Baptist Church. It was a busy place. He looked over the notes in his hand and steeled himself. With the short days of winter, the daylight was already taking on dusk-like appearance, and it gave an unreal diffused glow to the imposing church. What he was about to do was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, and he wasn't sure he was up for it. He hoped his wife had made it here. He was going to need support for this.
He had nearly made it to the front doors when he was recognized by the reporters, who shouted out his name, and began to fire questions. "Larry . . . Larry . . . Can you tell us how many might have died? . . . what's the body count? They said that there would be no announcements at the mine, and that everything would be announced here. Is that correct? Did anyone survive? Is the search still going on? We're on a deadline here. People have a right to know . . ."
It was the "right to know" that made Larry turn on them. He had told himself he would ignore the press, but that got to him in a way that surprised even him. He turned to the reporters and a small group of curious onlookers. He exploded. "I'm here for the families of the men who are in that mine! Nobody else. They're what's important right now. You wait your turn, you God damn vultures."
There was one reporter in the front who knew his trade and saw an opportunity when it presented itself. He slipped past one of the barricades that had been erected and started in on Larry. "So there are fatalities. How many? What did they die of? Are you confirming that there are fatalities?"
Larry started to go for him but couldn't move. Reverend Green had opened the doors and five or six pairs of arms were
restraining him. He struggled for a moment until he realized he was being restrained and then relaxed.
Reverend Green leaned toward him. "Priorities, Larry. Remember what's important."
Larry looked at Reverend Green. He didn't know the man all that well. Knew who he was, but didn't really know him. His respect for the Baptist minister went way up that afternoon. He nodded. "He's only doing his job, and it seems he's a better at it than his cohorts. Come inside. I've saved a little coffee for you, if you want it. There are a lot of people who have been waiting for you."
Larry wasn't prepared for what he saw when he stepped into the sanctuary of the church. He froze. There were more than three hundred people crammed into a place that was designed for only two hundred. An image from a horror movie, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds came into his head. The scene where Tippi Hedren was in the attic, and the killer birds were packed into every nook and cranny, all quiet, staring, and ominous.
He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. There was a pathway being made to the pulpit. He saw his wife Erica there. She was looking at him too, but in admiration. He locked eyes with her, and moved through the crowd. He could do this. Just maybe, he could do this.
After some introductions, and with a chalkboard relocated from the one of the Sunday school rooms, Larry began. The tension in the room was brutal. "First of all," he began, "I want to thank Reverend Green for his hospitality in accommodating all of this. But I understand that there are people supporting this church from all directions and faiths. Every part of this community, old and new, is here. For that, I thank you all. As I go through this, I'm going to stick to the facts, and what I know for sure. But . . ." He paused, trying to find the right words. "I'm not going to pull any punches—I'm going to tell you like it is as we see it. I'll tell you everything I know. But no matter how bad it gets, don't give up hope. We have hope."
He stepped to the chalkboard and drew a line to show the surface, a vertical tunnel, and then a horizontal tunnel near the bottom of the board. "We know that something happened. We think it was here." He drew an X at the end of the bottom tunnel. "We don't know what. When it happened, there were men working there . . ." He drew a circle around the X. "And over here." From the vertical shaft, he drew another horizontal line in the opposite direction from the first, only much shorter. "And we had men working here." He drew another circle at the end of that tunnel.
"We had men working on tasks at different ends of the mine. The distance from this X to this X, is about one and a half miles. When something happened early this morning here . . ." He pointed to the first X. ". . . the men from here went to help." He pointed to the second X in the smaller tunnel. "The men in this longer tunnel were the more experienced miners. Those in the other end were mostly apprentices with our most senior man.
"Since the explosion we felt, we have not heard from any of them. There was contact shortly before that explosion, but none after. All of the communication in the mine is down due to damage, so we needed to send men inside to see. There are men in there now, and they're setting up communications and trying to move forward. The further they go, the more damage they're seeing, indicating that whatever happened this morning—the explosion, also happened at this end of the mine." He drew a circle around the end of the longer tunnel. "That's where we think everyone was."
He stopped at that point and looked at the audience. There was a range of reactions, all of them subdued, some of them delayed as translations were made. Several sniffles. But these were a pragmatic lot of people, and the reactions were more stoic than he expected.
"The further we move into the mine, the worse the smoke. The air quality—the survivability of the air that they can breath—is diminishing. The rescue team is now wearing what we call SCBAs, or 'self-contained breathing apparatus' because the air in the mine won't sustain life." He paused, letting the statement sink in. There were several sobs as the understanding grew. It was if nobody wanted to cry out first. Eyes went back to him.
He let the room settle a moment. "That does not mean that they're all dead. It just means that we can't breath the air on the way in. We're attempting to drill a hole from here . . ." He put an X on the surface above where the miners were. ". . . to pump in air to this area." He drew a line from the surface down to the end of the long tunnel. "That will take us most of the night, if it works. There's a lot that can go wrong in drilling this hole. We're using equipment that's not designed for this, and it's slow going.
"We're also moving down the tunnel from the elevator to the area where the men may be trapped and unable to communicate. This is being done by the rescue team.
"So far, we have found no one, alive or dead. It will be after sunrise tomorrow that we think we'll have the hole drilled, or the men down to the end of the tunnel." He paused for a moment. "This is hard, I know." He stepped from behind the pulpit, so there wasn't anything between him and the audience. "Members of my family have sat in those pews the same as you, waiting for words, alive or dead. It will take time, and even when we find the dead, it may take time to identify them. We won't announce anything until we're positive. It may be several days. I can take questions for as long as you like and I'll be staying here through the night with you."
The questions went on for many hours, and Larry answered them all. Honestly and to the best of his ability.
He met every person in every family.
He was right. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, or ever would do.
* * *
Hank was tired. His men were tired. They were nearing the limits of their endurance and were very close to giving up when they got the news from topside.
The air sample that had been pulled at the far end of the mine, where the well-drilling rig had managed to break in, had shown very high levels of carbon monoxide. Levels that couldn't sustain life even for a little while. Miners had self-rescuers, and additional ones were scattered through the mine and on equipment, so the possibility existed that someone could have been swapping them out over the last thirteen hours, but. . . . But, if the guy had that kind of energy and wherewithal, he would have gotten out by now.
Hank sat by the phone, took off his mask for a moment to grab a slug of water and quickly put it back on. He sat with his back to the ribs, and his hard hat off to cool his head. He motioned at the guys to gather around him. He looked at his watch. They had broken every rule about how long a rescue team should be in a mine. But he had no choice. Dawn of the second day had broken above them, and they had found no bodies, no survivors, and massive destruction. The explosion had blown all of the seals down, along with most of the lighting, vacuum breakers, mining carts. Even all of the mules were dead, over thirty of them in their stalls. The loss was just about total.
Hank was trying to decide if this was a rescue mission or a recovery mission. Recovery meant that they had to leave now, rest, re-equip, and come back to fight the remaining fires and remove the bodies. "One more crosscut, guys, and that's it. We don't want anyone to have to look for us and drag our butts out of here in a body bag. One more crosscut, and we terminate the mission. The far end of the mine does not have a sustainable atmosphere, and we're way past the time when someone could use the self-rescuers to survive. They only last for an hour when new, and all the ones in the mine are a couple of years old." He held out his arm, and one of the team members helped him to his feet. "One more crosscut, and we call it."
The other members of the team looked at each other, and nodded quietly. They fanned out across the tunnel and went deeper into the mine.
* * *
The onlookers at the mine scanned the sky when they heard the buzzing sound of an aircraft in flight. They searched the clear and cold morning sky. The direction of the sound couldn't be pinpointed. Most people turned to the north, the rest turned in multiple directions. The aircraft came into view from the northeast and the gathered crowd turned to watch it. The aircraft began a long slow turn around the rising column of smoke. It circled only o
ne time, and then turned toward the landing strip.
A murmur began, wondering who was on the craft. Rumors flew. Guesses were made. Most of the down-timers had no idea who it would be. It was certainly not important, at least for them.
* * *
Mike Stearns stared at the column of black smoke rising from the metal structure that made up the entrance of the mine. From his perspective in the Belle, eight hundred feet above the ground, it looked bad. Very bad. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass canopy as the airplane made the wide turn over the mine. He was aware of the upturned faces pointed in his direction and just as aware when they turned back after identifying the plane, focusing on the reality in front of them. Whoever was flying above them wasn't important, not today. He looked at the smoke again. His breath began to cloud the glass in front of him. He let it obscure his vision. Is this how a mine owner feels when something like this happens in his mine, under his direction, he wondered. He had always hoped so, in the past. But he was never sure.