Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America

Introduction

1 In the summer of 2002 the world’s attention was riveted to a field in southwestern Pennsylvania. On July 24, 2002, nine bituminous coal miners were trapped underground in the Quecreek Mine by a flood of water that was released when the workers unexpectedly broke into an abandoned, flooded mine next to it. Rescue efforts began almost immediately in hopes that the miners might still be found alive. The mine’s surveyor, on the surface , used his carefully surveyed underground maps to choose the surface point that corresponded to the most likely location of the crew below. The crews drilled a small hole to provide fresh air and to try to create enough air pressure in a high part of the mine to prevent the miners from drowning . The surveyor’s educated guess was correct. Once the hole was drilled, the trapped miners below rapped on the bit to indicate all nine were alive. Then the operation moved into rescue mode. Operators attempted to dewater the mine with huge pumps, and used an enormous drill rig to slowly create a hole large enough to lower a special rescue capsule to remove the miners to safety. Seventy-seven hours and a couple of broken drill bits later, the miners were all rescued alive.1 The Quecreek rescue miners and rescuers were lauded as true heroes, and there were no obvious villains. The problem was that the adjacent abandoned mine, called the Saxman, actually extended closer to the boundary line than anyone working for Quecreek realized. When the miners broke through, the Quecreek Mine maps indicated that they were still Introduction 2  Seeing Underground three hundred feet from the abandoned Saxman workings. Abandoned mines dot the American landscape, and pose a real hazard to subsequent mining operations due to risks of flooding, instability, and explosive gas. Since the 1960s federal and state programs have collected and microfilmed maps of mines periodically, but despite regulations requiring submission of maps, many abandoned mines have outdated maps or no maps at all. In order to get a permit to open the Quecreek Mine in 1998, its operating company had to conduct a thorough search for maps of the adjacent Saxman Mine, to try to determine the exact location of its workings next to Quecreek. The company found several maps, but “most of the maps were antiquated and of no practical usefulness.”2 Two maps, however, could be used. One had been stored at the federal mine map repository in Greentree , Pennsylvania; this map, dating from 1957, was also on file at two state mine map depositories. It had not been marked “final,” however, by a certified engineer. By contacting the former owners of the Saxman Mine, Quecreek officials had been able to find a map that dated to approximately 1961. This one was also not certified by an engineer, but it showed workings that were not on the 1957 map. This 1961 map of the Saxman was used by Quecreek to develop the map and plan of mining that composed Quecreek’s state mining permit application. The state, for its part, doublechecked to make sure that Quecreek had looked for maps in all of the conceivable places, found nothing unusual, and approved the permit in 1999. Mining began in 2001.3 Ironically, however, another, better map of the Saxman Mine did exist. In June 2002, a month before the Quecreek accident, the granddaughter of the last state mine inspector of the Saxman Mine donated her grandfather ’s personal papers to the Windber Coal Museum in Windber, Pennsylvania , some twenty-five miles northeast of Quecreek. Included among his effects was a 1964 map of the Saxman, marked “final,” though it had not been certified by an engineer. Ominously, the map, shown in figure I.1, depicted in yellow a set of parallel gangways proceeding directly toward the Quecreek boundary, well into space that had been shown as unmined in the earlier maps. When investigators of the Quecreek accident discovered it in August 2002, the map was “found lying in a corner of the museum ’s attic and was not catalogued or indexed.” The map had indeed been provided to the Pennsylvania mine inspector, but had “inexplicably” not been entered into any of the federal or state map repositories.4 Introduction  3 The Quecreek disaster and the subsequent discovery of a better mine map in the local historical museum highlight the central importance of...