The great escape at Ironwood

February 22, 1997

IRONWOOD, Mich. --The 43 men who were entombed 129 hours in the Pabst Iron Mine were sleeping peacefully in the Grandview Hospital at daybreak today and by night most of them will be back with their families with the long underground ordeal of suffering and privation but a memory.
Grief has turned to joy over the rescue of the 43 men, the last of whom reached the surface at 11:22 o'clock last night. Today this mining town is in the midst of a thanksgiving celebration in which everyone is taking a part.
When the steel door of the cage of H shaft was thrown open at 9:22 and Samuel F. Sinkelma, the first man to be rescued, stepped forth, it was the signal for the celebration to begin. A roar of welcome greeted Sinkelma, father of eight children, from the 5,000 persons gathered about the shaft. Hats were thrown into the air, camera flares lighted the vicinity, automobile horns were blown and in the downtown section, storekeepers closed their places of business and joined the paraders behind the Ironwood municipal band.
The second man to appear from the cage was Thomas Trewartha, shift boss. Thereafter the entombed miners, who were found upon the eighth level by a rescue party in the afternoon, were brought to the ground in small squads. Trewartha came with eight companions. The rescued men descended G shaft of the Pabst mine from the eighth to the twentieth level, climbing down the ladderway, with sturdy miners beneath them as support, and by an indirect route were led out of the bottom of the mine to the H shaft, where the cage awaited them.

Rescuers dig through the rubble of the collapsed shaft toward the trapped miners.

As soon as they appeared from below, the miners were taken to the first aid car of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, where they were given stimulants. Then they were speeded to the hospital, after they had an opportunity to greet their families. Trewartha was the last to go to the hospital and he went there to "be with his men" not because he wanted more medical attention, he said.
Scenes of great confusion were enacted as the miners came out of the cage. Wives, mothers and children leaped into their arms. Sons and brothers rushed forward to shake hands. The men, bearded and haggard, and wrapped in blankets, broke down with emotion. One miner carried his year-old child to the rescue car and would not part with her. Another would not leave the side of his wife. A third, although he shivered from the cold, jerked himself away from the men supporting him to kiss his mother.

Changing technology and economic conditions led to the abandonment of deep-shaft mines. But strip-miners continue to pull ore from the region's rich iron deposits.

"We knew it was only a matter of time before we would be rescued," said Jacob Luoma. "We expected rescue by Saturday. We could hear the drilling and blasting you know, and we were conserving our strength to the last."
The miners devised various means of spending their time, Luoma said. Sometimes they sang songs or popular tunes, to impart cheer to the weaker men, whose courage had begun to desert them, or to keep up their own. Sometimes they joined with Leonard Uren, Salvation Army worker and a miner for many years, in hymns. Sometimes they sat around in a circle and discussed politics and in their solemn moments they talked of religion.
"Some of us prayed, too," said Luoma. "It made us feel better to pray."
The men pooled their lunches, which had been partially eaten before the cave-in of the shaft Friday noon, and Trewartha rationed out the food in small bits, a square inch of bread or cake at a time. But it lasted a little more than a day and then the birch bark tea became the only food.

The U.P. mines provided work for thousands, including the railroad workers who laid the tracks and hauled the ore to waiting ships.

Several other miners said, "It wasn't bad, you get sick from hunger after the first day or so and then it doesn't bother you afterwards. You just get weaker, that's all. We didn't dare think of food, however. Yes, we will be back at work in a couple of days."
The rescue of the 43 men will live for years as one of the heroic epics of the Gogebic Range. The rescue party consisted of Oscar Olson, chief mining engineer; Harry W. Byrne, mining captain; George Hawes, safety expert and Matt Wicklund, a miner. Hawes was the first to reach them. Trewartha greeted him and then shouted back into the passageway, "Yoho--boys--wake up--they're here." There came exclamations of surprise, wild yells of exaltation, as sleeping men, who had awakened with a start, scrambled to their feet and made their way to the shaft station, tottering from their weakness.
"What do you need the worst, boys?" asked Olson.
"Tobacco," responded the miners, and Hawes produced a cigar. He gave it to one of the men, who lit it with a borrowed match. In a twinkling seven men were smoking the cigar, passing it from one to another.

Oldest mine: The old Jackson Mine was the first iron mine to open during the boom years in Michigan's U.P.

Ironwood went wild with joy when shortly after 2 p.m. it became known that the miners had been reached and were alive and well. Half the population started for the mines. The Red Ore road leading to H shaft was choked with automobiles and men and women streamed over the open fields from every direction. Extra police were called out to keep the crowds out of the roped area round the
shaft. Women were predominant in the crowds, many of them the mothers, sisters and wives of the entombed men. Some wept, some laughed hysterically and some turned their faces upward in thanksgiving. Others strove to shake the hands of Hawes, Byrne and Wicklund.
D. G. Kerr, vice president of the U.S. Steel Corporation, owners of the Oliver Iron Mining Co., and D. E. Sutherland, superintendent of the mine, soon went to the shaft, both grinning from ear to ear. Sutherland's eyes were damp and his mouth quivered with emotion.
"You don't know how relieved I am that the men are safe," he said. "I feel 10 years younger."

Ironwood miners prepare to change shifts on the 14th level of the mine.

Perhaps the happiest man in Ironwood was Michael Collins, county mining inspector for the last six years. Collins, whose duty it is to inspect the shaft, was blamed for the disaster by relatives and friends of the miners, and the old man took the censure very much to heart. Dozens of persons came to his home to upbraid him and threats of violence were made repeatedly. Police guarded the home from time to time as the crowds became menacing, and Harry Collins, the inspector's son and game warden for this district, spent his nights on the front steps with a deer rifle in his hands.
Statements from the miners that the shaft had been in poor condition for a year and that repairs had been neglected, caused John B. Chapple, managing editor of the Ashland Daily Press in Wisconsin to ask for a Federal investigation of the cave in. He wrote:
"The Daily Press further declares that fatal accidents in Gogebic County in the last 30 years have totaled more than 500, or an average roughly of one life for every 250,000 to 300,000 tons of ore mined."

Families wait outside the Pabst Mine for word of the trapped miners.