Underground Hazards

The life of a miner was tough.

Those hard rock miners faced a number of hazards including gas pockets, cave-ins, silicosis of the lungs caused by dust, caverns holding 170-degree scalding water, (150 degrees would cook meat), cage or elevator accidents, and much more. Men sometimes fainted and fell hundreds of feet ricocheting off the timbers and into the scalding sump. But what the miners feared the most was fire, which also caused toxic gasses to spread through the mines.