The task of stripping the Crandall Canyon mine of its last large blocks of coal fell to four crews.  None was exposed to the mine’s dangers more than the “D” crew, six members of which died last on Aug. 6, 2007. They logged 20 shifts in its thumping, ever-shifting passageways in the month before the walls blew in on them.  It was also no accident that when the mine’s walls imploded again 10 days later on a valiant group of would-be rescuers, two of the fatalities were Dale Black and Brandon Kimber. They were the foremen of the “A” and “C” crews, respectively, and had logged nearly as many hours gutting what little was left of the mine deep beneath East Mountain.

All of these guys knew how volatile the conditions were. They had repeatedly heard the hollow rumbling sound produced by “bounces,” miner lingo for the Earth’s sometimes petulant manner of relieving pressures produced when a seam of coal is removed. They had seen how these bounces can cause coal to slough off tunnel walls or, worse yet, be expelled violently into voids.  A bounce in March that terminated efforts to mine Crandall Canyon’s North Barrier pillar – one of the last two enormous coal blocks that supported the mine’s roof – had occurred on Kimber’s shift. Just four days earlier, another foreman had noted it was “bouncing real hard on occasion. Smacked little Carlos up aside of the haid [sic] with a pretty good chunk.”

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