The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1922-05-11

II began in the autumn of 1917. Nor,
than $50 men have been employed 2.
hours a day ever since. A vast patterr
OF tunneling and slopes has been fillec
from the 1000 TO the 1900 foot level
A similar labyrinthine area, extending
from the 900 to the 1900 foot level has
yet to be choked with slime The big
sludge pipes from the surface are
pouring in the heavy, thick fluid at the
rate of 1000 tons daily, and the work
will be completed, according to the en-
gineers, by the end of the year.
The COLOSSAL proportions of the job
may be indicated. Imagine a struc-
ture of rock and metal four times the
length and breadth of the Woolworth
building and also twice as high sunk
so far beneath the hills Of Butte that
the peaked roof of its tower is 600 feet
below the surface. Imagine that struc-
ture filled with smoldering fire and
heating to terrific temperatures a wide
radius of the embedding rock, while
great volumes of gasses given off by
it's series of superimposed furnaces
permeates and poisons many of the
underground avenues and alleys, so
that the miners in regions far removed
from the actual fire have had to wall
koff their workings with bulkheads and
barriers of cement as a measure OF
protection.
To carry the scenario further, i'm
agine crews of men, who frequently
find the need of oxygen breathing ma
chimes urgent working night and day
in the subterranean passages. setting
up huge blow fans to keep back gasses;
establishing or establishing pipe
lines, or driving with diamond drills,
through highly heated rocks, holes
through which the sludge may find its
way to the fire. Imagine this, and a
fair idea of the conditions and situa-
ton below the surface as it was at the
outset of the struggle may be had.
Fire Began in 1906.
But to complete the picture, it is
necessary to bring in the surface crew,
the men who day and night, summer
and winter whether the weather be
or 40 degrees below zero. keep the
sludge going into the buried fire cOun
try. They sluice out the slime of the
tailings pond. and patrol the flume,
three quarters of a mile long, through
which the sludge is carried to the
point from which it starts it's descent
in a series of 2OO-foot drops to a dis
tributing station 1900 feet from the sur
face They man the pumps. and watch
the hydro chronograph an instru-
ment which measures the quantity Of
solids the flowing liquid contains-to
see that the proper proportion of solids
and water is maintained throughout
every hour of the "a.
The fire, now almost on the verge
Of complete eXtinguishment, began in
1906, in an Anaconda property known
as the Minnie Healy mine. Fires in
metalliferious mines are attributed to
three causes - defective electrical
equipment incendiarism. with which is
linked carelessness, and spontaneous
combustion Mr.. Rahilly who served |
as an engineer in most of the big min
ing districts in North and South Amer
lea before coming to Butte, attributes
most underground fire outbreaks to the |
latter, though highly charged wires
stripped of insulation by the chemical |
action of mine water, are often respon-
sible. Heat generated by ground
the OxidizatiOn of broken
sulphide ore. or decomposition of other
mineral combinations frequently is
he says. to ignite combus-
tible materials such as timber, rope I
and canvas left in abandoned workings.
The Minnie Healy fire is supposed to
have started in this way on the 400
foot level.
Measures at once were taken to
block the fire 1t was walled off with
concrete bulkheads and work resumed
IN a level 100 feet beneath. But in
he course of the subsequent mining
operations, the floor beneath the fire.
hough 100 feet thick. became cracked
md the fire passed through, eating its
way gradually upward and downward
BY 1917, the year the hydraulic, or
luQSlnBt PROCESS VI tAbll6 uiSAiAlehl
vas inaugurated. 1t had invaded the
ieighboring Tramway Leonard and
Vest Colusa mines.
1t became necessary to wall off i'm
nediately parts of all three of these
lines, from the 1900 to the 2OO0-foot
svel and to seal the raises of the 1900
Dot level The fire area then COM
rised block extending 1000 feet north
nd south and 1900 feet east and west
nd 1900 feet vertically. Timber and
lie sulphur contents of broken ore and
.ope filling rendered the passage OF
lie fire from level to level compare
vely easy and expeditions.
At the same time the temperatures
rock formations relatively far re-
owed from the fire zone rose rapidly.
as high as 2S7 degrees.
degrees above boiling point, have q
zen recorded by the fire fighters in a
sw openings driven toward the smol-