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Arizona Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project
Internet Presentation
Version 020110AH
By Allan Hall
APCRP Historian - Author -
Certified Coordinator
A
Short History of Mine Accidents and Fatalities:
1912 through 1930
The office of the State
Mine Inspector was created by the Arizona Constitutional Convention and came
into being on May 15, 1912. One of its
duties was to file annual reports on the state of mining activity, including a
summary of ore production, mine inspections, accidents and fatalities. Because the reporting period was from
December 1 to November 30, the annual report for 1912 covered a period of only
six and one-half months. During that
span of time 33 serious injuries and 28 fatalities occurred in the mines. The first full year of reporting was in 1913,
which saw 70 serious injuries and 66 fatalities.
How one injury qualified
as “serious” and another injury might not, could have been a bit too subjective
for the young legislature, and the Mine Inspector’s office corrected this deficiency
the following year. The public began to see just how dangerous it was to work
in mines – or at least in some of them.
By the end of the ninth
year of record-keeping (1920), 561 fatalities and 7119 injuries had been
reported. The potential for injury or death was, it seemed, everywhere. A
random sampling of fatalities from this period is listed below. The cause of
death is given verbatim from the annual reports.
|
Name |
Cause of Fatality |
Mine |
|
Ramaldo Carillo |
While blasting a round of holes
he had difficulty in lighting the last hole and the first hole exploded while
he was still at the last. |
Detroit Copper |
|
Roy Jacobson |
Crushed by cage and then fell
down shaft. |
Copper Queen |
|
Augustine Camache |
Overcome by gas, fell in water
and drowned. |
Little Daisy |
|
Teolindo Estevez |
Drilled into a missed hole. |
Gold Road |
|
P. Padillo |
When going off shift he went
through No 3 stope where blasting was going on. First round of holes had gone off and as he
started going through this stope the second round went off. |
Vulture Mines |
|
Charles Jenkins and Agapito Gutierrez |
Failed to open air valve after
blasting and Gutierrez was overcome by gas.
Jenkins went down to rescue him and was also overcome. |
Arizona Copper |
|
Francis L. Dupen |
Fell off a cage to about 350
feet below. |
Miami Copper |
|
Moises Lastra |
Was being lowered in a bucket
when the engineer noticed the bell cord shake and stopped the bucket. Went down to investigate and found Lastra’s
body at the bottom of shaft. |
Detroit Copper |
|
Jose V. Garcia |
While climbing into car, came
in contact with trolley wires. |
Arizona Copper |
|
W.M. Roberts |
Stepped on cage while in
motion. He was caught between cage and
station bar, and almost decapitated. |
Calumet & Arizona |
|
Joe Pianti |
Fell from 500 foot level to 800
foot level. |
Iron Cap Copper |
|
E.E. Sargent |
Crushed between (ore) car and
timbers. |
Iron Cap Copper |
|
Batiste Guizzetti |
Sufficated in raise. (note
misspelling) |
Inspiration Consolidated |
|
E. A.
Stevens, T. Sandovol and A. Cardello |
Repairing bulkhead at
fire. Burned. |
Arizona Copper |
|
Frank J. Perks |
Caught by flywheel and drawn
through base of engine and flywheel. |
Walnut Creek Mining |
A careful review of the
injuries and fatalities shows that the difference between the quick and the
dead was often only a matter of inches or seconds.
To be sure, some of
these incidents were the result of carelessness by the victim or fellow worker;
but the lack of safety training, the use of unsafe equipment, dangerous
procedures and the ineffective shoring of underground spaces were
unquestionably major factors.
The top ten causes of
death in Arizona mines from 1912 through 1920 include:
- Falling rock or timbers:
168 deaths resulted from miners being struck or crushed by falling rock
(not cave-ins). This includes rocks, boulders and slabs falling from the
roof or side of a stope or drift, rocks falling down chutes or raises,
falling timbers, or similar circumstances
- Fall of mine worker:
104 deaths came from falls by miners. This includes falling out of cages
or buckets that were being raised or lowered in a shaft, slipping and
falling into shafts, winzes or down ore chutes, or being knocked off a
piece of equipment and falling.
- Explosions of powder or dynamite:
70 miners were killed during this period by premature or delayed
explosions. Many of these can be attributed to defective fuses.
- Crushed by equipment:
64 deaths resulted from the mine worker being crushed by equipment. This
includes derailment of trains or ore cars, being caught under or run over
by engines, being crushed between two ore cars, between a moving piece of
equipment and a tunnel wall, or by a cage or bucket in a shaft.
- Cave-ins:
36 fatalities resulted from the complete collapse of the roof and/or walls
of a stope or drift. Death may have been caused by crushing or suffocation
while buried under debris.
- Missed Hole:
28 miners were killed when they drilled or picked into a hole that had
been charged with blasting powder or dynamite. In these cases, the charge
had not exploded when all of the holes were set off.
- Electrocution:
26 fatalities came from contact with bare electrical wires. Typically,
these deaths were from contact with an overhead trolley wire.
- Suffocation:
15 miners died from suffocation caused by gases, unventilated spaces after
blasting, dust, or having been trapped in a confined area.
- Falling equipment:
11 miners were killed by buckets, cages or other equipment that fell down
a shaft, striking them.
- Air blast:
5 fatalities occurred in a single incident involving an air blast. Details
are not available, but this may have been a concussive shock wave.
The remaining 34
fatalities were caused by collisions (4), steam or gas explosions (3), fire (3)
and a variety of decidedly bizarre accidents, including one miner who was
impaled on his pick. In the ten years that followed, from 1921 through 1930,
another 357 miners would die in accidents and 6,388 would be injured. Not
surprisingly, the major causes of death did not change appreciably in that
decade. The total reported deaths and
injuries for the period between May 15, 1912 and November 30, 1930: 918 fatalities and 13,507 injuries.
_files/image003.jpg)
Figure 1 Mine Fatalities
The graph titled “Mine Fatalities”
illustrates both year to year (red line) and cumulative (blue line) deaths
during this period. If the death toll seemed to moderate in the years leading
up to 1930 it was due more to a decrease in the number of men employed by the
mines rather than to substantive improvements in safety.
_files/image005.jpg)
Figure 2 Trend of Incidents
In fact, the rate of
injury and death (as a percentage of the work force) would usually spike in
years that experienced a sharp reduction in the number of mine workers, as the
graph titled ‘Trend of Incidents” illustrates in Figure 2. For example, notice
the sharp drop in mine workers from 1919 through 1921 (the solid black line). During
this period the rate of accidents and fatalities (red line) was significantly
above the 17 year trend. The year with the highest rate of accidents was 1921,
when 9.2 percent of the workforce (531 out of 5749 men) would be killed or
injured. The year with the lowest accident rate was in 1917, when 4.69 percent
(1080 out of 23,001 workers) incurred injuries or death. The two years of 1912 – 1913 are omitted
because the total number of injuries was not included in annual reports. The general trend (green line) shows that the
rate of injury and death declined over 17 years to about five percent of the
total workforce.
By comparison, the most
recent statistics (2004) show that 0.718 percent of all mine workers (surface
and underground) experienced work injuries during the reporting year. This
represents 97 out of 13,499 workers and includes rock, sand and gravel
quarries. Only 23 men were employed in underground workings. [1]
Although reporting was
mandatory after Statehood, it does not mean that all accidents were reported by
the mines or tabulated by the Mine Inspector. On May 17, two days after the
Mine Inspector’s office was established, Francisco Vargas fell into an open cut
at the Coronado Mine, suffering a concussion and drowned. His death was not
reported. Was this an oversight? Perhaps - but there was ample time to collect
this statistic before the end of the reporting period. [2]
The worst disaster to
occur at the Coronado Mine also went unreported. A derailment at the Coronado Incline
took nine lives at 4:00 pm on August 13, 1913, but was not included in the statistics
for that year. The baby gauge locomotive was transporting ore and workers from
the Matilda Shaft to the top of the Incline, which gained 1,500 feet of
elevation over a distance of only 3,300 feet. Death certificates indicate the
men were thrown from the car(s) and crushed.[3]
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] There were 96 injuries and one
fatality in 2004. The Annual Reports of
the State Mine Inspector can be accessed at: http://azmemory.lib.az.us/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/statepubs&CISOPTR=4191&REC=3
2There
had already been six fatalities at the Arizona Copper Company workings between
January 1 and May 13, 1912. These were
not reported because they preceded creation of the State Mine Inspector office.
3 William
Schafer, Mining Engineer; Gleaner Cardwell, Electrician; John McCann
(Scotland), Machinist Helper; Clifford Johnson, Engineer; Edgar Jones,
Machinist; Pedro Oropesa
Another unreported
incident occurred in 1923 and involved the unhealthy combination of stupidity
and greed. Seven miners, whose names are not recorded, sneaked into the Vulture
Mine at night to engage in personal enrichment.
If you are not familiar
with hard rock mining terminology, a stope
is the open chamber that remains after valuable ores have been removed. Stopes
could become quite large if the ore deposit was substantial. If the native rock
was of sufficient strength the chamber would not be reinforced with timbers for
reasons of economy. Instead, the stope would be supported by columns of native
rock. The larger the stope was the more columns were needed to prevent
collapse.
The seven larcenous
workers planned to chip away some of the rich gold ore in the columns and make
their escape with as much fortune as they could load onto a dozen burros. The
column or columns they selected that night must have been particularly rich in
gold. In their greed they removed so much ore that the entire stope collapsed;
killing them and the burros. Their grave marker is a very large depression on
the surface known as a glory hole.
Without mandatory reporting one can
only speculate about the statistics of death and injury between the 1850’s and 1912.
One thing is certain: The big mine operators - some of whom are listed above –
favored profitability over safety in the extreme. Their hiring practices and
the methods they employed in underground operations guaranteed, and even exacerbated,
unsafe conditions. Moreover, the number of hard rock mines in Territorial
Arizona far outnumbered surface operations.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
(Mexico), Laborer;
Julian Rico (Mexico), Laborer; Castante Cordedecia (Italy), Baker; Gisseppe
Masoco (Italy), Baker.
Arizona Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project
Internet Presentation
Version 020110AH
WebMaster:
Neal Du Shane
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Du Shane
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[1] There were 96 injuries and one fatality in 2004. The Annual Reports of the State Mine Inspector can be accessed at: http://azmemory.lib.az.us/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/statepubs&CISOPTR=4191&REC=3
[2] There had already been six fatalities at the Arizona Copper Company workings between January 1 and May 13, 1912. These were not reported because they preceded creation of the State Mine Inspector office.
[3] William Schafer, Mining Engineer; Gleaner Cardwell, Electrician; John McCann (Scotland), Machinist Helper; Clifford Johnson, Engineer; Edgar Jones, Machinist; Pedro Oropesa (Mexico), Laborer; Julian Rico (Mexico), Laborer; Castante Cordedecia (Italy), Baker; Gisseppe Masoco (Italy), Baker.
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