This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
ORANGEVILLE -- When the power went out, Kenneth Valdez assumed a blizzard raging outside the Wilberg Mine was responsible.
Five minutes later, a phone call from a surface office broached a more ominous reason: There's a fire in the mine. Evacuate.
Two miles underground, the 38-year-old foreman quickly assembled his crew. "Don't leave people behind," he emphasized, leading a methodical withdrawal to the surface. He then loaded his pickup with firefighting materials and drove a mile back to the fire -- to the mouth of the 5th Right section.
Only then, upon finding mine foreman Richard Cox, did Valdez learn the gravity of the situation. "We've got no goddamn water," Cox growled. "The men are inside."
Twenty-seven men and one woman, to be exact.
Just one, Kenny Blake, would make it out that night -- 20 years ago tonight. The tragic fates of the others would not be known for days. Coming just before Christmas made it especially heartbreaking. The victims left 65 children, with one on the way.
Wilberg remains the nation's worst coal-mining disaster of the last third of a century, since 38 died in a 1970 explosion in Hyden, Ky. It was Utah's worst since the 1924 Castle Gate No. 2 explosion killed 172.
But amid the chaos of the Wilberg Mine fire, would-be rescuers proved every bit as heroic as those who responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Thirty-four mine rescue teams, roughly 200 trained men, came from four states to lend a hand. Driven by desperation, miners such as Valdez, Bryan Blomquist and Gilbert Madrid risked all to reach the trapped 27, whose chances of survival dwindled with each passing minute.
Not everything they did was smart. Madrid and Blomquist nearly died. Both believe their compatriot, Daniel Paul Brink, actually did -- before he was resuscitated by fast-acting rescuers.
"We did what we had to do. I took a calculated risk, and just about paid for it," recalls the tattooed Madrid, now 56. "But I tell you what: Given the same situation, I would do it again. I didn't hesitate. I wouldn't hesitate in the future. Waiting is what kills people."
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Wilberg. Valdez doesn't talk about it much. Blomquist or Madrid either. Their lives have moved on.
Valdez is still a miner, helping the Skyline Mine return to production outside Scofield. He has opened mines in Mexico and Wyoming since retiring in 1998 from Utah Power, which owns Wilberg, and has a dent in his head from a falling rock that fractured his skull a decade ago.
Like Valdez, Madrid is a Vietnam vet from East Carbon. After Wilberg, he worked at various mines but now owns a bar in Price. He also is a bail bondsman, has an apprentice investigator's license and is "getting into bounty hunting." And like Valdez, he rides Harleys. "I drive fast. I live fast."
Blomquist still works for Utah Power. He transferred from the mine to the coal-preparation plant at the utility's Hunter power plant in 1990, and lives in the same Orangeville house he did in 1984.
Their lives intertwined that tragic night.
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Blomquist moved quickly after overhearing excited chatter about the fire on the mine's telephone system. He collected extinguishers from the underground shop where he worked as a diesel mechanic and drove to 5th Right.
"I was amazed," says Blomquist, now 47. "A coal mine's black. I drove up on the fire and there just was a wall of orange."
It was bad. The fire was in the "intake," the tunnel that delivers a perceptibly brisk flow of fresh air to miners. Being in the intake gave the fire a steady source of oxygen to fuel its growth. It also meant the fire's deadly byproducts -- smoke and colorless, odorless carbon monoxide (CO) -- were being carried directly toward the miners in the tunnel that also was their primary escapeway.
In addition, the blaze was bearing down on an "overcast," an aluminum ventilation structure that separated fresh air from fouled. Lose that overcast and nothing prevented smoke and CO from filling the conveyor belt tunnel -- the only other designated escapeway.
At this critical juncture, no water was available to fight the fire. Power to the mine had been turned off to prevent volatile fire gases from exploding. But doing so also shut down pumps that supplied water.
The overcast collapsed before water was restored, increasing the lethal exposure of a crew swelled to twice its normal size -- including senior management -- for what promised to be a big production run.
Blomquist was waiting for water, stringing out firefighting hose, when Blake "just appeared" in the fresh-air tunnel, covered with soot. He had been at the 5th Right longwall mining machine when the crew there learned of the fire. He grabbed a breathing apparatus, worked his way down the smoke-filled conveyor belt tunnel and found his way into its "dogleg."
Nine miners from 5th Right entered that dogleg. Only Blake was able to feel his way to a mandoor, a 3-by-3-foot metal sheet hinged on top, that allowed passage from the dogleg into an adjacent tunnel.
"He was totally amazed about where he was at, that there were functioning people, I guess. And he was babbling, rambling," Blomquist says. "I could tell right then he was in no shape to stay underground."
Blomquist put Blake in a pickup and drove him outside to safety.
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By then, Valdez was engaged fully in the firefight. He was dragging hoses, taking air samples, hanging tarps to deprive the fire of oxygen. He ended up near the dogleg, not knowing Blake had escaped through there minutes earlier.
Smoke curled around the mandoor's edges. Valdez put on a breathing apparatus and stepped inside.
"My whole thought was, maybe by chance these people were here and just didn't know the way out, and maybe by chance they would see me," he says. "But that was impossible. You couldn't see a darned thing. I said, 'It's time to turn around. I'm not going to do anybody any good in this area.' "
Smoke had seeped into the side of his apparatus, Valdez noted. The seal was not tight because he had a beard. So after retreating through the mandoor and taking more air samples, he drove to the surface, went to the bathhouse and shaved.
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On the way out, Valdez ran into Madrid, just arriving for his graveyard shift. They had known each other forever, but Madrid did not recognize the clean-shaven Valdez until he heard the voice. He liked what he heard. Valdez wanted to check the "bleeder."
"Once I'd been in [the dogleg] and found nothing, I was just praying to God they'd taken the other route and headed back to that area," Valdez says.
The bleeder is a tunnel designed to lure explosive gases out of the caved area behind the longwall, a voracious mining machine that leaves behind a void after excavating a coal seam. Eventually, the mountain fills the void with rockfalls.
The federal Mine Safety & Health Administration required bleeders to be kept open for travel. The 5th Right bleeder was -- barely. Its wooden roof supports were crushed and twisted by the weight pressing down from overhead. What's more, there was a sizable drop from the 5th Right bleeder into the 6th Right bleeder.
Valdez and Madrid grabbed another foreman, Mike Ledger, and worked their way to that junction, Valdez taking air samples every 300 feet. Each time, he hung tags from the roof bearing their initials, the time and the CO concentration. The CO readings were always safe.
But no opening was visible among an abundance of fallen rock where the 6th Right and 5th Right bleeders met. Madrid crawled through one slot, but "it looked so bad we didn't investigate any further," he says. They left, dropping a few breathing apparatuses along the way, filling out more tags. The last one said, "1:27 a.m. 12/20, Going out."
Three days short of a year later, when the body of Gordon Conover finally was found, he had reached a spot beyond that tag. He had a new breathing apparatus in his hand. From the breathing apparatuses he left behind, MSHA investigators determined the scrappy 24-year-oldlived at least 4 1/2 hours that night, exploring several possible escape routes before managing to squeeze through the twisted bleeder.
"In all probability," MSHA theorized, "the air in this area was smoke-free but was laden with CO. It is also possible he read the fire boss tags left earlier and believed that this area was safe from the effects of the fire."
Valdez shudders. "You always think of that. Was he behind us just a few minutes? Could he see us and couldn't communicate with us? You think, 'You didn't turn around to see.' Maybe he was following us. You never know. You never know. That's a mystery only God knows -- because we never will."
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Valdez and Madrid were chastised by mine-rescue personnel for that freelance foray. They understood the concern.
But by then, the fire had been burning for five hours. Time was running out for the people inside. The rescue operation was often in disarray, commands from the surface conflicting with what bosses underground wanted done. Nothing was decided quickly as federal inspectors, company officials and union leaders debated strategies.
Madrid had had enough. Later, when an MSHA inspector ordered an evacuation for a reason Madrid did not feel was justified, he refused to leave. So did Valdez.
"I've never been a runner," Madrid says. "Maybe it's because we did it so much in Vietnam. Leave one area, come back six months later and lose a bunch of people to reclaim the same area. That's what I felt. I'm not leaving this [firefighting spot] because we were going to have to come back and do the same shit."
He felt compelled to fight on, even though he didn't like a lot of the victims and they didn't like him. Like or dislike, it didn't matter. "I've had psychiatrists tell me I'm a reactionist," says Madrid. "I live my life on an emergency basis. It has got to be done now and think about the consequences later."
So Madrid kept moving, at one point venturing into the dogleg visited earlier by Valdez. Same result. No visibility, hasty retreat.
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Valdez, meanwhile, had made two short trips into the 6th Right Return, the tunnel coming off the longwall's far end. This tunnel was the focus of post-disaster acrimony because MSHA had allowed Emery Mining Co., which ran Utah Power's mines, to continue mining 5th Right despite two cave-ins that rendered the tunnel impassable. The agency later admitted its mistake. That tunnel might not have been the best escape route, but it needed to be open just in case.
By 11 a.m. Friday, 14 hours into the fire, Valdez knew the tunnel's air was filled with CO. Still, when company superintendent Dan Brink was adamant about seeing if it offered any access to the section, Valdez agreed to go with him.
Donning breathing apparatuses, they walked one-third of a mile to the worst cave-in. Much smaller than Brink, the wiry Valdez wiggled across a length of 20-foot pipes stored next to the cave-in. He was nearing the far end of the cave-in when he heard Brink holler, "We've got smoke at our backs. We're trapped." Valdez crawled back, but there was no smoke. Brink was seeing things. Because he had a beard, CO was poisoning him.
Valdez put his arm around Brink's waist. Small man supporting big man, they ricocheted off roof-support timbers until they were within 700 feet of reaching clean air. Then Brink went down.
Valdez replaced Brink's dislodged face mask, gave him a blast of oxygen, then went for help. He found Madrid and Blomquist. They hustled in to Brink while Forrest Addison and Dominic Guarascio prepared a makeshift stretcher.
"Not to seem cold, but [Brink] was toast. He was done. He wasn't breathing," Blomquist says. "Gilbert started shaking him and then he took his [own] apparatus off and put it on Brink. I called him a few choice words because that wasn't smart."
But it worked. Brink took a deep, guttural breath. Down to one apparatus, Madrid and Blomquist used the "buddy system." Blomquist would take a deep breath, then hand his face mask to Madrid, who would take a breath and hand the mask back. "That lasted a whole five minutes and Gilbert passed out," Blomquist said.
Addison arrived soon with a mine-rescue crew. They grabbed Madrid, carried him to a mandoor and threw him through. Then, Blomquist said, "I started going dingy. My legs went kind of rubbery." He collapsed and was hauled away.
Kaiser Coal rescue-team member Jerry Howell helped revive Brink.
"We grabbed the face mask. We put it on the man's mouth. We hit him with a shot of [oxygen]. The man threw up in his mask. We jerked the mask off, cleared his airway out, put the mask back on," Howell testified later. They rushed him out of the 6th Right Return and tossed him into a pickup with Blomquist.
Brink stopped breathing once on the way out, but CPR from mine rescuer Ray Ferguson kept him going until medical personnel could take over.
"That's an instance where there could have been 29 or 30 dead instead of 27," admits Madrid, readily defending his actions. "I've been called 'dumb ass.' My answer was, 'What if it had been you? What kind of dumb ass would I have been then?' . . . All I know is, old Dan Brink said, 'Thank you.' "
That rescue took place around noon on Dec. 20. Another 17 hours of persistent effort passed before Howell's Kaiser rescue team entered the dogleg and found the first nine victims. That afternoon, a Rio Algom team from Moab located four more. Twelve more victims were found the next day.
Conover and James Bertuzzi were missing and presumed dead when a buildup of explosive gases forced the evacuation of the entire mine site until a sharpshooter in a helicopter shot out the giant mine fan feeding oxygen to the fire. All mine portals then were sealed, entombing the 27.
Recovery teams needed 11 months to reach 5th Right and retrieve the bodies. A month later, they found Conover in the bleeder and Bertuzzi near the cave-in in the 6th Right Return.
MSHA concluded an air compressor with two defective safety devices started the fire, a theory rejected by Emery Mining and the union. But placing blame doesn't matter as much to Valdez as embracing the know-how, training and technology that emerged from the disaster. "The knowledge they acquired -- we all acquired, in fact -- was just something you couldn't put a dollar value on," he says.
While these guys don't talk about Wilberg much, they will never forget.
As for Madrid, he can live with his actions, and his mistakes.
"People might call me 'dumb ass,' but they'll say it with respect," he says, "because we covered every possible avenue of escape. We did everything humanly possible to try to get them guys out alive."