EAST CARBON, Carbon County — Mining officials have called them mountain "bumps." Local miners refer to them instead as "bounces."
Whatever you call them, miners in Utah's coal country are well aware of the seismic activity that takes place deep below the Earth's surface, and they know the damage it can cause.
"Anybody's that's worked around these mines has experienced bounces, but to say that any of us have ever experienced something of this magnitude, I don't think so," said Jeff Palmer, emergency preparedness manager for UtahAmerican Energy Inc., which manages the Crandall Canyon Mine.
Palmer should have been deep inside the mine last Thursday, when a 1.6 magnitude bounce rocked a section being cleared by rescue workers to reach six men trapped in Crandall Canyon for the past two weeks.
An unreliable truck, however, delayed Palmer from leading four members of his rescue team into the mine for a shift change. So instead of being one of the injured, Palmer rushed into the section of the mine and began tending to those hurt by the bounce.
In the five to eight minutes it took Palmer and another man to reach the section impacted by the bounce, most of the dust had already cleared. And what Palmer saw was chaos, men buried beneath piles of coal that had exploded from square pillars and the ribs (the walls) of the mine.
Palmer helped load a stretcher into a truck that he drove to an ambulance waiting outside the mine's entrance, then headed back in to help dig a man out from the rubble with his bare hands. The man he helped uncover survived; the first man did not.
Dale Black, Brandon Kimber and Gary Jensen, two local coal miners and a federal mine safety inspector, died Thursday night. Six others were injured.
Bounces can be scary
Along with the creaks and groans, mountain bounces are just another thing to get used to when working deep below the surface. Usually, they're small, not even worth noticing, really.
Other times, they're much more significant, throwing furniture-size pieces of coal and breaking heavy machinery in half.
"It's like being inside something that's exploding," said Palmer, a 33-year coal miner. "It kind of gives you a 'what's going on."'
Terry Oviatt, a section supervisor at the Deer Creek Mine, likened the bounces to standing in front of a big bundle of dynamite. The concussion starts in your feet and travels throughout your entire body, he said.
"It scares the s--- out of you," Oviatt said.
Palmer can't remember the first bounce he ever felt underground, but he remembers one from 1984 that left him badly injured. He was pulled from the mine with a face "tattooed with coal dust" that had to be sanded off in a painful process.
But even that, he said, can't compare with what has happened at Crandall Canyon this month. Though they may have a general idea, no local miner really knows what it would be like to experience the initial, 3.9 magnitude seismic event or last Thursday's deadly bounce.
"Anybody's that's worked around these mines has experienced bounces, but to say that any of us have ever experienced something of this magnitude, I don't think so," Palmer said.
In those long days and nights immediately following Aug. 6, Palmer and his team members have certainly tried to imagine what the six men experienced in those early morning hours.
"We've sat and talked at the mine, what could it have been like in there?"
Rescuers have imagined what they would have done in the same situation. Would they, for instance, have tried to get out of the mine the way they came in, as miners are trained to do, or would they have retreated from the exploding rubble?
Had they done as their training dictates, Palmer said, the men would have likely run right into the heart of the debris.
'Not a cave in'
Though both the initial incident and Thursday night's tragedy have been called a "collapse," Palmer said anyone associated with mining knows that is not the case.
"This is not a cave in," he said. "This has never been associated with a roof fall, it is not."
When pressure from overhead gets too great from seismic activity, it collapses the large square pillars of coal inside the mine sections. Those pillars basically explode at the same time the ribs buckle, pouring coal into the entryways all the way up to the roof.
"You can imagine if a person's there, it's devastating," Palmer said.
Mine owner Bob Murray has adamantly maintained that the six men were trapped as a result of an earthquake — a view Palmer supported Sunday.
"I'm not a seismologist. I'm not a geologist," he said. "I am a coal miner. And I can tell you, it doesn't matter what name you put to it, this event on Aug. 6 was different from what anybody around here has ever seen before."
Immediately after the Thursday incident, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration indefinitely suspended the underground rescue effort to reach miners Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez.
Palmer, who works in all three of Murray's Utah mines, said members of his rescue team have all expressed an interest in going back underground to look for the men, mainly to bring peace to their family members.
"Their loved ones are still underground," he said. "Just like anyone else, you'd like to see those guys come out, no matter what condition they're in.
"It's hard to give up on."
MSHA has brought to Utah a team of mining experts to evaluate whether the underground rescue efforts could resume, though with continued seismic activity, Palmer doesn't see how such a thing could happen.
"How can you send people back in there knowing that if you disturb another pillar it's ready to explode?" he asked. "You can't."
Palmer was also a rescue worker during the 1984 Wilberg Mine fire, which killed 27 area miners. The bodies of those men weren't recovered until a year after the disaster.
Though the twin tragedies at Crandall Canyon have aroused memories of Wilberg, the two aren't exactly the same, Palmer said.
"This wasn't a fire. This was a geological event," he said. "There's no technology to prevent something like this. If there is, we don't know about it or it would be in place."
Lessons will be learned and new safety procedures, such as equipping miners with locating devices, likely put in place, he said. But in Palmer's mind, the Crandall Canyon Mine is a reminder that every time he goes underground, he's subject to the forces of nature.
"It gives you more respect for that mountain, I'll tell you that. And it'll do the same for everybody who's been involved."
'It's a good life'
Coal mining is in the blood of everyone who lives in the small communities surrounding the Crandall Canyon Mine. And to these residents, you either understand the culture, or you don't.
Asked to describe coal mining to an outsider, 23-year veteran Terry Oviatt responds: "How do you describe the color red to a blind person?"
It is not the dark, dank work often portrayed in movies, he said.
"I don't think any of it's as horrific as people who don't know are portraying it to be," Oviatt said Sunday, shortly before leaving for his shift at the Deer Creek Mine.
"It's like construction work, but it's in the dark."
Towns like Huntington, which has suffered greatly this month, or East Carbon, Cleveland, Elmo, Castle Dale and Price, all feel the pain of Crandall Canyon.
"With that many people at one time, I don't think there's anyone in the community it didn't affect," said Terry Oviatt's wife, Tammy.
As news of Thursday night's accident spread, the Palmer home filled with friends and family, each worried about Jeff Palmer, who was supposed to be inside the mine at the time, as much as their own family members.
"You grow up with it," Ricki Palmer said. "Everyone you know are coal miner's daughters or wives or friends."
The dangers of coal mining are not lost on miners' children, either.
"It's just not something that you think about every day," said Taylor Allred, one of Jeff and Ricki Palmer's four daughters. "It's just not something that I thought about on a daily basis. Now, when things like this happen, absolutely."
From their comfortable home in East Carbon, purchased with coal-mining money when Jeff Palmer was just 19 years old, Ricki Palmer agreed.
"It's a good life," she said. "It is. It's a good life. But when things like this come up, it shakes you and it rocks you."
E-mail: awelling@desnews.com