Because most of the oil in the Kern County oilfields is very thick, almost a tar, it's been found that steam injection works very well to thin it out, make it flow, and become pumpable to the surface. Unfortunately, working with live steam systems is very hazardous and must be done under tight supervision and strictest precautions for safety and proper procedures. Live steam is colorless and ordinarily can not be seen. Also, if a pipe has a dip in it, steam may condense in the dip and then, when one end of the pipe or the other is opened, sometimes there is just enough steam pressure left to push that extremely hot condensate out amidst a working crew. It’s bad news for anyone getting splashed.
We thought we had adequate procedures in place, but we still had people getting hurt, so it was back to the drawing board to examine what we were doing, what had happened, and what we could come up for future situations that involved working on live steam systems. For whatever reason, we had not thought about the fact that steam pipes or leaks also heat the soil around the pipe too. Because of that, we did not train our people to look for and expect it to be a hazard to be noted. It is now.
This same logic can be applied to pipes carrying toxic chemicals as well, even milder one’s such as copper or gold slurry’s or tailing water. There is a lot of acid in that stuff and you don’t want it on your skin. Any excavation around tailing ponds for repairs to old pipes and installation trenches for new installations can be hazardous.
This was a little off subject, so lets get back to that.
At a surface coal mine in Kentucky one day, everything seemed to be going well. I was half snoozin in my pickup, listening on the CB radio as the usual gang of our moron operators insulted each other on their radios. This was a continuous chatter that started as soon as they got in their machines at the beginning of the shift and went on all day. It could and often did get very raunchy.
Anyways, I heard one of the blast-hole drillers let out a scream and then his radio cut off. Now our drillers often worked on a bench alone with no one around. The hole positions were all marked out for them by the blast crew and so they would drill like crazy, and fill in the time to the next stem change by challenging the mother or fatherhood of one of their buddies. Often the holes would run right up to the edge of the highwall, and sometimes rocks, dirt, small trees and bushes and snakes or other critters would fall off onto the rig. I guess that about the tallest highwall at that mine was about 900 feet.
This time was a little different. The hole positions were right up at the edge of the high wall, so the driller had to position his drill straight on. Normally they would drill parallel to the wall, with the cab positioned on the side away from the wall. But he couldn’t with this set of holes. So he was punching them out and going right along. He was one of our better drillers and his machine was a decent rig compared to some of our others.
Well, after that one scream, naturally the other operators started checking on each other to see what the fuss was about. Everybody seemed to be OK, but one of the hands finally noticed that the driller wasn’t answering up. The superintendent knew where he was supposed to be and he headed over to that bench to see what was up. It was about a mile away and sorta around a bend so we couldn’t see him from where we were. It took the Super about five minutes to get round there, and he immediately hollered for one of the 992’s to get over there quick. All he could see was the tip of the drill mast and about half of the front of the machine.
It turned out that a huge chunk of the highwall had come loose and slammed down on top of the drill rig, burying the cab, dust collector, the back of the engine, and the draw works. The operator was trapped in the cab, where the glass on the back window and draw works side had busted in and the dirt and rocks buried him up to his neck. He had one arm and hand free, but all the controls were buried and the engine had shut down anyway. He couldn’t move.
992’s don’t move very fast, but that one was floor-boarded all the way over and the Super was coaching the operator all the way, telling him just what he wanted him to do. That consisted of shoveling out the cab door side of the machine very carefully so the Super and a couple of other people including myself could get in there and pry open the door. I had to get a big pry-bar out of my pickup and the Super had a slate-bar. Between the two of us we got the door open and there sat our operator, gasping for air. He looked like a frosted cone from all the dust that was caked on him, and he couldn’t talk at all, just sorta grunted.
We hurriedly dug him out with our hands and laid him in the shade. The loader operator (his brother in law) washed him up a bit and in a few minutes, he was able to breathe alright and he started talking. Couldn’t get him to shut up for a minute. The Super loaded him up in his pickup and headed to town to get a doctor to see him. I was left standing there with two of my mechanics and directions from the Super to see if I could get the rest of the machine unburied and ready for the night shift, then about three hours off.
I sent one mechanic that could operate a little to fetch a 988 coal loader that wasn’t being used at the moment. The other one and I then dug the rest of the dirt and stuff out of the cab. When the loader arrived, we dug the other side out some, then after digging around the draw-works, mast and back of the engine and pump drive a bit, we were able to restart the engine. We had to work about an hour to get the drill string up. Tried to get bit and all, but it wouldn’t come out that way so I finally just unscrewed the stem and got what was left out of the ground. I knew we could recover the rest later.
We used the loader a bit more to dig out some rocks and brush, then with my two guys watching carefully, I attempted to move the rig away from the wall. I was scared that more of that high wall might come down, but very little did and I was mighty happy as that DrillTech dug in and moved away from the site of the fall. I took it out far enough to be safe and then instructed the boys what to do. I hollered at my welder to load up two more drill stems and a new drill bit and bring them over from our yard with our boom truck. I had to get one of our water trucks over as well to wash all the rest of the dirt and crud off the drill. It was a mess.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t notified my boss of this little incident, so I radioed him and he decided to come up with our safety director, who had been on a deep mine inspection several miles away. Both of them were a little upset that none of us had gotten any pictures. They also brought some parts up from our warehouse, including some new cab glass, and we had the rig ready to drill a little after the second shift started. But the driller did not complete those holes that night. We waited till the next day, and then, with a couple of foremen watching, the guy that was buried the previous day completed the row.
After the shot was loaded and set off, it took about four days to clear the blast area. Sure enough, one of the dozer hands working above the loaders called me and reported that he could see the last drill stem with the bit on it starting to stick out. I was a little worried that it might have gotten bent in the blast, but once we got it out and checked it, there was no bend in it.
In the meantime, we met with the drillers and blasters to see how we could avoid this in the future. The upshot was that we still had to drill and blast close to the highwall, but the dozer and loader hands would attempt to clear the potential slide areas more carefully, the drills would not be allowed to work that last row closest to the wall without a spotter, and no drilling at all close to the highwall was to be performed at night.
This was not the only machine that we had to dig out at those three mines over the two and a half years I worked there. I could probably write a book about the stuff that happened and the characters we had working for us. I’ve dug out several machines in other locations too and am happy to say that no one was ever killed in any of the separate incidents, though there were injuries. But those are for another time perhaps.
we get tired of standing in the mud leaning on the shovel.
