don't tell momma i worked in the coal mines

It’s a Miracle

dragline from James' coal mine 

    At times I wonder why I am still here, and I am sure there is a purpose, or it just wasn’t my time. Some jobs I had were worse than others and when I was blasting on the strip mines, I would say that was probably about the worse of what I had done, and posed in itself a threat to my existence on more than one occasion.

     One time our company in its infinite wisdom and an attempt to haul more blasting material called  Anfo , a combination of diesel fuel and  ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the same stuff they used to blow up the Oklahoma Federal building. I was the driver and assistant or blasters helper, and it was my job to deliver the Anfo and dynamite to the site where we were blasting. I worked at the time for Atlas Explosive services company as the driver and operator of equipment as well as I said before a blaster’s helper helping load drilled holes up to 80 feet deep with a combination of dynamite and Anfo to blast the hilltop off of a strip mine and cast the material hopefully to the other side of the strip pit to help the strip mine company remove the overburden and ease the removal of coal from a natural coal seam.

    Sounds easy enough, but it was a grueling job and required following safety procedures you had better follow for obvious reasons when dealing with dynamite. Rarely do you get a second chance to fix a mistake. But still they happen and even when you are vigilant, accidents do happen.

    On one occasion I had to back down a hillside with my truck to access the drilled holes, they had a rough road graded in by a dozer, and the truck I was driving had a long wheel base and a dummy axle in the back as I said before to carry more weight. Having a third axle allowed the company to add another 10000 lbs. without going over the legal weight limit as specified by the state of Ohio, Division of Motor Vehicles. This axle had no brakes and when not needed, you could collapse the air bags and it would lift up off the pavement to allow you to steer around corners easier. Once we were off road, as in a strip mine it didn’t matter what our weight was, so we would just pick the axle up and it would allow the drive axles to work better, and give better traction in the soil conditions. This worked fine until you ran into mud more than four inches deep, then the next thing you know you were dragging that extra set of wheels on the rear along, and you usually ended up stuck if it was real deep.

strip pit

   Now all this may sound a bit technical, but I need to explain in depth on the chance someone out there may actually understand what I was going through with these dummy axles. Anyhow I was backing down the hillside and stopped the truck with no problem on the bench. A bench is a flat spot graded out with a dozer where we would drill holes to shoot the sides of a strip pit.  I was still on an angle with the nose of the truck pointed up hill, and in fact the whole truck was leaning uphill, as I set the air brake on the dash. It locks all the wheels and prevents the truck from moving or you hope so. I climbed out of the truck and headed over to my blaster Ben, an old guy I worked with most of the time.  My truck was loaded with dynamite, blasting caps, and everything one would need to make a big bang to say the least.

      We were standing there figuring out what we needed to load these holes I had just backed up to, and the next thing I knew out of the corner of my eye I noticed the truck starting to roll backwards to the edge of a cliff the dozers had cut in previously,  and it was about 60 feet over the edge to the bottom of the strip pit, as we were sitting on a high spot above the coal seam, and the truck was headed for the edge.  I ran over and jumped up on the side of the truck, having left the door open, and hopped in through the open door, and jammed the brakes, which did nothing as the rear wheels were locked, but the truck was sliding still regardless of what I was trying to do. I was just about to jump out of the truck, and let it go over the hill without me, as it was within four feet of the edge of the cliff when it again stopped moving. I sat in the seat frozen. Later after looking at what happened and trying to figure out why it happened, we figured that the truck had rolled up onto that tag axle as it didn’t have any brakes and it lifted my drive wheels into the air causing the truck to slide.

    What stopped it from going over the edge was the fact it had leveled off and this took the weight off the tag axle and once again put it back on my regular truck axles. Just having the truck go over the edge wasn’t such a big deal in comparison to the fact it was loaded with dynamite and blasting caps and ammonium nitrate as well the fuel oil would have made an uncontrolled explosion you could hear for at least 20 miles. It could have been my one chance at fame as I surely would have made the papers as being the one that lost his life trying to save a bunch of people. Instead I was the idiot that jumped on the side of the truck when it would stop anyhow, but there was no way I would have known that.

    Had it blown up, there was five people in the immediate area that would have probably been dead, then after the initial explosion that would have rocked all those holes we had already loaded with dynamite, having shoved ten tons of blasting materials and dynamite into, it would have caused a secondary explosion no one would have been prepared for, including the mine workers at the opposite end of the pit. This would have resulted in an air blast that would have the potential of hurling huge rocks and boulders at equipment and personnel possibly burying unaware workers under tons of soil and possibly leading to more deaths.

     Instead the incident the shit out of me bad, really bad, as I sat there in that seat of the truck and just shook my head as my blaster Ben just looked in amazement at what had just happened, and we both agreed that the company suffered from a severe case of head up their ass, for the sake of a little more profit. Of course when I returned to the shop and explained what happened to my boss it was suddenly turned on me as if I was the problem and I should have known better. How was I to have known that the truck might do that? I had never put it in that position and no one else had before either. But it was the typical company response. Of course they never figured it to happen either, but they were never going to admit that or accept responsibility or for that matter remove that extra tag axle and decrease profits, and improve safety.

another strip pit pic. straight from the bowels of the earth

       I watched in Texas when that fertilizer plant blew up and killed those firefighters and thought how this could have been me also. Some jobs you never know just what is in store for you. Not saying I couldn’t be out on a tractor and it roll over on me and the same happen.  But some are just inherently more dangerous than others and when management gets involved in pursuit of the almighty dollar it becomes another story altogether. Some jobs it just seems as if you are the low man on the scrotum pole and all you get is the shaft, so to speak.