When I was a young man I worked as a welder for a big open pit copper mine in Arizona. The blasting crews would work all day and night drilling holes 20’ deep that would then be filled with good old ammonia nitrate fertilizer, which they then poured diesel fuel down on and then topped with a blasting cap. The explosions were always set off at 4:00 pm every day. The air raid sirens would go off and if you were anywhere in the pit you ran for cover.
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Every once in a while a really big rock 2-3’ around would be thrown a very long way. We had one come through the roof of our welding shop and crush our great big cutting table. That rock flew from 1/2 mile away. We also had a pickup truck crushed once.
The mine I worked at wasn’t always an open pit mine. In the 1930’s and 40’s it was all below ground tunnels.
No maps were kept of the layout of tunnels and shafts and every once in a while a big hole would unexpectedly open up. This happened to one of the blast hole drill crews, unknowingly they were drilling a hole right above a vertical shaft, the ground opened up and swallowed the drilling rig and killed the operator. Now get this, the safety resolution for this was to tie a rope around the drill operators waist and pay some to stand off to the side and hold the other end of the rope for 8 hours a day! Companies today like to post safety signs about how many days since the last injury. The mines used to measure how many days since the last man was killed on the job. I was there less than a year and in that time two men were killed when they mixed two wrong ha
When I was a young man I worked as a welder for a big open pit copper mine in Arizona. The blasting crews would work all day and night drilling holes 20’ deep that would then be filled with good old ammonia nitrate fertilizer, which they then poured diesel fuel down on and then topped with a blasting cap. The explosions were always set off at 4:00 pm every day. The air raid sirens would go off and if you were anywhere in the pit you ran for cover.
View attachment 137839
Every once in a while a really big rock 2-3’ around would be thrown a very long way. We had one come through the roof of our welding shop and crush our great big cutting table. That rock flew from 1/2 mile away. We also had a pickup truck crushed once.
The mine I worked at wasn’t always an open pit mine. In the 1930’s and 40’s it was all below ground tunnels.
No maps were kept of the layout of tunnels and shafts and every once in a while a big hole would unexpectedly open up. This happened to one of the blast hole drill crews, unknowingly they were drilling a hole right above a vertical shaft, the ground opened up and swallowed the drilling rig and killed the operator. Now get this, the safety resolution for this was to tie a rope around the drill operators waist and pay some to stand off to the side and hold the other end of the rope for 8 hours a day! Companies today like to post safety signs about how many days since the last injury. The mines used to measure how many days since the last man was killed on the job. I was there less than a year and in that time two men were killed when they mixed two wrong chemicals in the acid vats and created a toxic gas. One man lost a foot in a conveyor belt. A haul truck driver was killed when he ran into the back of another haul truck on a dark and rainy night. OSHA was non existent when I was there. The welding I used to do back then has changed dramatically, we took no safety precautions. The welder I used to use , threw out such a dense cloud of black smoke, that same welder today requires a full face remote air supply respirator. Ahhh the good old days.
Gee, Bob,that was at least as dangerous a job as my friend descibed working as a civilian construction employee in Iraq with mortar shells being lobbed into the compound at night and the IUD's. He went for the pay, (hazzard pay) but If there was no OSHA you probably didn't get any of that.
