When fire broke out in Idaho's Sunshine Mine in 1972, there was little panic. Miners knew there wasn't much to burn a mile down a wet mine.
But deadly carbon monoxide killed 91 men in one of the nation's worst mining accidents.
A new book, "The Deep Dark," provides a gruesome moment-by-moment account of the disaster that began on May 2, 1972, when unexplained smoke began pouring out of the mine near Kellogg, Idaho.
Three decades after the fire, author Gregg Olsen found that many residents of the Silver Valley remain scarred by a tragedy that left some 200 children without fathers and prompted big changes in the nation's mining laws.
"The most difficult thing was talking with the people and crying with those people as they told me stories they kept inside for 30 years," Olsen, who lives in Olalla, Wash., said.
The nation was gripped for a week by efforts to rescue the 93 miners who were trapped underground by the fire. People didn't realize that many of the miners dropped dead where they were working as toxic smoke overcame them almost instantly.
Only two of the 93 men trapped inside the mine made it out alive. Ron Flory and Tom Wilkinson were 4,000 feet below the surface when the fire broke out. They went lower, where they found a pocket of fresh air. They stayed there for a week, suffering from fear and hunger, before they were found on May 10.
Olsen said the two were lucky to stumble into some fresh air. From nearly the moment they were rescued, Flory and Wilkinson faced irrational resentment and anger from the families of men who died, Olsen found.
Flory, 29 at the time of the fire, visited with Olsen at a recent book signing in Wallace.
"It's not something I dwell on. I don't have flashbacks. I never did," Flory told The Spokesman-Review newspaper in brief comments before leaving.
Flory went back to mining and retired several years ago with a medical disability. Wilkinson left mining after the fire to work for the Forest Service, Olsen wrote.
The book at times has a ghoulish quality, with horrifying descriptions of the bodies of the victims being discovered by rescuers in the hot, wet mine. Many of the miners could be identified only by their clothes or the stickers on their helmets.
For Olsen, the book was a welcome change from his previous volume, an account of the lurid affair between teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her former sixth-grade pupil, Vili Fualaau.
Olsen had long been haunted by the mining disaster, which is memorialized by a poignant sculpture near the mine along Interstate 90. When he began researching the story, he was surprised to find that no comprehensive account existed. He spent four years interviewing 200 survivors, family members, executives, government regulators and others, and his book weaves in the story of what was going on at home while the fire was burning in the mine.
Olsen writes about the macho world of the miners, where excessive attention to safety was considered unmanly. Many miners didn't bother learning how to use respirators or other safety gear, preferring to spend their time earning money. Mining safety laws at the time were lax and rarely enforced.
Bob Launhardt, in charge of safety at the mine, is a somewhat tragic figure, haunted by the fire.
The cause has never been established, but Launhardt is certain that insulating foam sprayed in the mine was flammable and created the extremely toxic smoke. He believes the federal government never really wanted to know the cause, to avoid lawsuits.
"Clearly, when so many die on your watch, it isn't easy to let go," Olsen wrote of Launhardt, who still lives in Pinehurst, Idaho. "Now in his 70s, he is an old man with perfect posture and piles of information to prove that what happened so long ago could have been averted."
The fire led to the abolition of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, which was considered too friendly with mining companies, and led to the creation of new agencies more concerned with worker safety. Reforms such as enclosing elevator operators in airtight compartments, so they would not be disabled by smoke, and requiring miners to carry personal respirators, were the result of the disaster.
The Sunshine Mine produced more than 350 million ounces of silver during a history that began in 1884 with the discovery of the Yankee Lode. The mine operated for decades after the fire, but low silver prices led to its closure in 2001.
Prices have rebounded and the mine is slated to reopen later this year.