This Day in Labor History: May 2, 1972
By 
On May 2, 1972, a fire started in the Sunshine Mine, outside of Kellogg, Idaho. The fire filled the mine chambers with carbon monoxide and other poisonous gas. Of the approximately 170 workers in the mine that day, 91 died. This horrible disaster led to long-term changes in American mine safety.
Mining is inherently dangerous. Going underground–well, let’s be honest, that’s not human habitat. There are a lot of dangers in the process of mining. Most of the horrible mine disasters in American history are from coal. Mining coal brings a whole other level of safety issues, since coal itself is part of the process of decomposition that creates flammable gasses. Indifference to safety conditions meant that the late 19th and early 20th century saw mine fire after mine fire, killing thousands of people per year and upwards of 300 per incident in the worst fires. But hard rock mining did not have these problems. People certainly could die in hard rock mining and did. Falling timbers and the like could kill. The Granite Mountain Mine disaster in 1917 is the worst hard rock mining incident in American history. But it was sort of a freak accident, one that combined bad luck and the overall indifference to safety that marked American working conditions at that time. The hard rock miners of the American West most certainly had lots of labor activism and organizing, but their demands tended to be less around safety than in coal.
The late 1960s saw a greater focus on mine safety, particularly after the Farmington Fire in West Virginia led to a revolution in the United Mine Workers of America, the Black Lung Associations, and the passage of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. This was part of a broader atmosphere of labor reform in this era that also witnessed the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1971. But it was still really dangerous work.
The Sunshine Mine is between Kellogg and Wallace, Idaho. It is a silver mine that first opened in 1884. This became a major silver district and a big part of American labor history. Huge strikes in 1892 and 1899 roiled the Coeur d’Alene mining district of northern Idaho. The defeat of the workers’ struggle in 1892 led to the formation of the Western Federation of Miners, an industrial union of western hard rock miners, who then were critical in the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. This particular mine was pretty small fry at that point though. It really hit its peak beginning in the 1920s with newer technologies allowing for deeper mining. The technological capability of the mine and the financial investment in it kept it going when many other mines had closed. So by 1972, this was a major mine operation.
It’s unclear why a fire broke out in the Sunshine on May 2, 1972. Federal investigators were never able to pinpoint a cause. The most likely possibility seems to be spontaneous combustion of some flammable materials near some scrap timber. A book released a couple of years ago suggested the use of Rigiseal, which was a Dow Chemical polyurethane foam sprayed in the mine to stop air leakage, but is highly flammable. Worth noting that after this, mines generally stopped using polyurethane foam products.
In any case, slightly before noon, smoke rose into the mine and quickly overwhelmed a lot of workers. There were immediate rescue attempts. The mine had an elevator, which is how workers got up and down, but smoke filled the control room. There was a backup system of pulleys where a few workers could get out and some were rescued this way, but the smoke eventually overwhelmed the men operating them. There were 173 men in the mine at the time. 80 escaped. 2 found a safe space in the mine and were able to survive long enough to be rescued a week later. The other 91 died.
The disaster was possibly worse because of the timing. Most of the mine’s officials were in a board meeting that happened to be taking place at the very same time. So authority in the mine was unclear at that moment and perhaps that led to greater chaos and a higher death toll. We can’t know this, but it didn’t help. But the rescue crews took a very long time to get there, that we do know.
The mine closed for seven months after the fire. When it came back online in 1978, it soon was the nation’s biggest silver mine producer again. In 1979, it produced 18% of American silver, so it was a major operation. Declining silver prices and declining production led to the slow drawdown of the mine in the 1990s. The mine closed entirely in 2001.
This disaster did lead to new mine safety legislation. The Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 brought the different types of mining under one agency for the first time, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Coal would still have separate standards for obvious reasons. Multiple annual federal safety inspections of all mines were required for the first time. Advisory safety standards were eliminated and replaced by mandatory standards. State enforcement plans were eliminated and replaced by federal enforcement standards. Mine rescue teams became a requirement of all underground mines. Mine unions and rank-and-file workers in non-union mines became part of mine safety committees. Mining remained unsafe because of its inherent nature. But outside of coal, the Sunshine is the last major mining disaster in American history and the MSHA deserves credit for this.
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