History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

“Well, what would be the result of a cave in the shaft?”

“It would close up the shaft and suddenly send poisonous gases through the lower levels.”

Leaving the shaft and the works, soon after the men had descended on their dangerous mission, 1000 feet below the surface of the earth, we returned to the town of Gold Hill.

As we entered the main street of the town, we turned and looked in the direction of the burning shaft, half a mile away. No sign of flame was visible, but there rolled up from the mouth of the shaft a great inky cloud of smoke.

“See!” cried my companion, “the fire has gone out! It is all smoke now!”

“There has been a cave in the shaft!” said I, and in less than half a minute the column of flame again darted into the air to the height of sixty or eighty feet, and instantly all the smoke disappeared.

Now let us see what happened in the mine at that time. After the fire broke out in the air-shaft, the draught, which had always before been downward into the mine (contrary to the general expectation when it was made), changed, and rushed fiercely upwards. The draught in the main shaft at the hoisting works, one hundred yards distant, which had before been upward, was instantly changed, and in it there was found a strong downward suction. This allowed the men who went below to approach quite near to the bottom of the burning shaft. They were set to work at tearing out the woodwork and pulling up the car-tracks in a drift connecting with the air-shaft at the 1000-foot level, preparatory to filling it with a bulkhead of rocks and earth, in order to cut off its connection with other parts of the mine.

While they were at this work the cave occurred in the shaft. When the mass of rocks and earth composing the cave fell down through the shaft—perhaps a distance of five hundred feet—it forced back, down into the mine, and out through the drift in which the miners were at work, a vast tongue of flame as fierce as that from a blow-pipe—forced back upon the men all the heat and flame there was in the lower part of the shaft when it fell.

This deluge of fire lasted but the fraction of a minute, when it was all sucked back into the shaft by the draught, but while it lasted it was fierce as the flames of a furnace. The men working in the drift were naked from the waist upwards, and below wore nothing but cotton overalls. In a moment the flames were upon them, and all were terribly burned, notwithstanding that they threw themselves flat upon the ground. In some instances their overalls were licked from their bodies—turned to ashes in an instant.

Nine of the eighteen men we saw so bravely descend into the burning mine were hoisted out, scarred and crisped; their clothes burnt from their bodies, and the skin peeling off in great flakes, wherever they were touched. One man was brought up dead. He was not found till the next day, when his dead body was discovered at the bottom of a winze into which he had fallen while fleeing before the flames. All of those burned finally recovered, but several not for many weeks. When the first squad of men was disabled, others bravely took their place in the drift, and finally succeeded in completing a substantial bulkhead; thus saving the mine. Though several caves occurred and drove them from their work, none were so disastrous as the first—the mass of rock in the bottom of the shaft doubtless preventing a free outpouring of flame.