Imperial Valley press., 1937-01-10
BY c. K. Spencer

TOR all ordinary flying purposes, engineers
can calculate stresses and safety factors; for
all practical submarine enterprises pressures
and devices to counteract them be accu-
rately estimated.
But the subterranean explorer now at work in
the vast systems of aqueducts being built under
the Rocky Mountain chains is finding literal
new world of engineering and science necessary
to meet the problems and perils he encounters
There engineers who dream of building
great cities underground to meet future eli
matte changes and of maintaining such metrop-
oil in permanent state of ideal climate with
modern air-conditioning apparatus. But if ever
such cities are built, they will owe their possl-
bility to lessons now being tragicay learned
by hundreds of men burrowing under the Rocky
Mountains and in the deep mines of more than
half the States Of the Union.
Earth that actually swells rapidly the moment
1t is penetrated and crushes huge oak girders
like toothpicks, causing to disappear so
completely and so suddenly that not the slight
est traces of them are found when the is
again penetrated is one of the most formidable
obstacles of the real underworld. Yet it has
been conquered
There are no known mathematical rules by
which such stresses can be figured in advance.
Each such problem must be met by the men
the spot and on it's merits. And seldom is
times under circumstances which involve delib-
crate sacrifice under conditions where there is
no alienation by excitement or emotion, such as
anesthetize the sacrifices of war
Modern mining engineering has lessened death
from cave-ins Every yard of an area being
mined is now first tested and studied by geol-
ogists before it is drilled or blasted; the mining
engineers know just how to brace as they go
along.
axth tho ct1Hdp mi and
suspected flood of gas; the sudden flowing to-
eether of gases or chemicals which explode
when they meet the explosion of powerful
gases by so slight a spark even that from
an ordinary f1ashlght has taken it's toll.
Now American science is meeting all these
forms of sudden death with spectacular success.
Electrical equipment, much of it heavy ma
chinery which either will not spark in any part
or if it does, sparks in hermetically sealed
spaces has been designed and is in use in many
mines and aqueduct channels
Gas masks for various specific gases and
masks for universal protection against all gases
encountered in the underworld have been pro-
vided and scientific system of safety engl-
neering has been built up from local mine units
to a final Capitalization in Washington in the
Federal Bureau of Mines which can dispatch
alertly waiting mine rescue cars from depots
strategically located from coast to coast.
mine disaster first involves the rescue
forces at the mine, and these are steadily aug
mented as rescue crews converge at the mine
with the big special railroad cars of the Bureau
of Mines finally rolling in with fully trained
rescue crews abroad
1t is dramatic occasion when the big men,
muster outside stricken mine or tunnel pre-
liminary to entering it for their task of rescue
Their leaders carefully indicate on maps the
course they will take in the mazes beneath
Miners safe on the surface gaze on these men
with awe, for they may not be seen alive again
In 1888 there were more than 1000 fatalities
in United States mines and tunnels; in 1884
there were more than 100 fatalities but under
ground operations were on bigger scale.
Yet these losses would have been immeasur-
ably greater without organized life saving as it
exists today.
In the Rocky Mountain ranges where pinch
ing operations by the earth crust set up zones
of intense crushing beneath the great peaks
some of the most significant engineering vic
tories have been gained.
Swelling ground constituted of the most