By Dave Skinner

Box 1486

Whitefish, MT 59937

406-862-0058 -- voice mail, no fax

599 words

The rescue of the Somerset miners has everyone talking about the presence of mind and courage of those involved at both ends of the accident and happy rescue.

Most folks think that America has some more heroes today. But she really doesn’t.

Those miners were heroes long before their accident.

Think about it. Anyone who goes underground in a deep, dark hole with dynamite, roof bolts, shotcrete and heavy equipment, is braver than most of us.

A friend of mine was the safety officer at America’s deepest silver mine. The working faces are over a mile down, in temperatures of over a hundred degrees.

Even better, the pressures from the overlaying rock and mountains are so great that the ore body is actually plastic -- it oozes.

I have a sample of the ore. It's heavy, hard stuff. To make it flow takes tens of thousands of pounds per square inch of sustained, steady pressure.

Yet engineers designed a way to safely control the flow of rock, developing a sequential mining technique that involves blasting and excavating a short tunnel, backing out, filling the tunnel with concrete, and then boring another tunnel underneath the concreted area, then filling that one with more concrete.

Still, not everything goes perfectly all the time. Sometimes the pressure is too much, and the rock blows up, sometimes with no warning at all.

To catch all possible warnings, the mine has a three-dimensional seismic monitoring system that tracks rock “pops” within the mine workings. The system's computers can also locate and detect patterns in the “pops” that indicate instability.

The rock also tends to pop when blasting emits shock waves through the earth. So, after each shot is carefully set, the mine is evacuated and the shot fired.

After a set period of time, the seismic record is checked for any patterns of instability.

Only after the mountain has “settled” do the crews go back inside.

I don't know if I'm too chicken to go down. But my friend did take me into an old tunnel now [that is now] maintained as an evacuation route. We got in there a ways, and then he shut off the lights for a few minutes.

Sensory deprivation chambers are nothing like that tunnel. And the real thing, when everything has gone completely wrong? Don't ask...but it might be a good idea if we all took a minute to think about it.

The men and women who do the difficult, often dirty, often inherently dangerous work necessary for our nation to enjoy our high living standards think about “it” all the time, every single working day, not just when disaster looms.

Let's not forget that, for a long time, the Somerset miners went down into the mountain because it was their job -- to mine the coal that powers our computers and heats our homes.

What would our jobs be if they didn't do theirs?

There are a lot of other Americans who have jobs from which they might not come home, not only miners or mine rescue teams, not only police, firefighters and soldiers.

There are loggers in the woods, farmers afield, ironworkers flying steel, railroaders running freight, truckers fighting storms -- the list is endless, the jobs all different, yet sharing one thing: Not everyone has what it takes to do those jobs, and do them well.

Those of us who rise to the challenge -- fair weather and foul, hot and cold, up and down, day and night -- just doing their jobs, every single minute of every single day, are American heroes.

Let's be careful out there.

Ironworker-cum-computer jockey Dave Skinner knows lots of American heroes.

Question from Jon Ryter in West Virginia: I have always been led to believe that when you get underground the temperature drops and remains a static 50 degrees. My wife and I enjoy visiting "tourist" caverns and it seems that the temperature in those caves is always fairly cool. What would cause the temperature inside that mine to skyrocket? Sounds like the mine is over a subterranean fissure.

Answer from Dave Skinner in Montana:

When you get down into the African diamond mines, they are at 120 degrees.

I believe that the Lucky Friday mine in Nevada was at the 6300 level. No fissures, just a zillion year old volcanic upwelling. I stood out at the exhaust fans and the air was really warm, in at least the 90's and this was the middle of winter.

Most caves don't go down that far, so they aren't effected by temps of the earth crust, but crude oil is hot when it comes out, too. It's just a matter of how far down you go.

The combination of heat and pressure is why we don't have geothermal plants everywhere. We don't have materials that can take the abuse. Otherwise we could just poke a hole and pour water in and get steam.