Mustering all his concentration, he tapped lightly on the accelerator, moving the Hummer back in three stutter steps, then another longer one, before stopping the vehicle in perfect position. He could hear one sandhog yell “Yeah!” and another, “Wow!” DJ climbed out the driver’s side, eager to check out his work. He was wearing slip-resistant boots and water-resistant coveralls over his faded jeans and long-sleeve collarless shirt, so he paid no mind to the water at his feet. As he walked around to the back of the Hummer, he was proud to see that the only impact he’d made had been with that plastic bottle of Coke, which now lay on its side in the boat.
Their shift had begun at seven a.m. After all the prep work, checklist review, and Humvee maneuvering, it was now after eleven150. The morning was gone, and even though they wouldn’t actually be removing safety plugs on this shift, they had more than a full day’s work ahead of them.
The MAP Mix 9000 was still AWOL, but the calendar could wait no longer. So today the divers would go in. The continued absence of the breathing system’s centerpiece had begun to weigh heavily on the guys. With Harald sitting topside in his trailer, and the divers preparing to climb into the Hummers, traveling east, DJ and Hoss talked it over. “Why is this thing even coming from overseas?” Hoss asked. “Why can’t they get one from the U.S.?”
For this shift, they would be breathing off their backup system—the cylinders of HP air lying on the Humvee roof rack. A simple lever could change the source of air flowing into their umbilicals, from the supply of mixed gas to the HP supply. DJ knew that Tap, from the start, had proposed using HP air for this job. Of course, Tap’s plan had lost out to Harald’s. As Harald had explained it, crews would likely be able to carry only about eight hours’ worth of HP gas with them, and considering that it would take about four hours of setup and travel to get to and from the end of the tunnel, that wouldn’t leave much time for actual work. In contrast, Harald’s mixed liquid gas system would allow the crews to work perhaps a twelve-hour shift, including travel and setup, and thus allow the job to proceed far more quickly. From his conversations with Tap, DJ had begun to wonder if Harald’s plan had won points simply for being more dazzling. It was way too late to try to replay that contest between Harald and Tap. Still, DJ found it funny that, for the first day of their journey into the tunnel under Harald’s command, the divers would be relying on the kind of straightforward, workmanlike breathing system that Tap had originally pitched.
Harald had assigned Riggs and Tim the task of getting the standby-backup Hummers into shape, so that meant they would be doing their work from the base of the shaft. Meanwhile, DJ, Hoss, and Billy would form the main team heading into the tunnel for the day, joined by a strawberry-blond Norwesco veteran named Mike Mars and a young, stocky Black Dog guy named Tracy Markham. The Hummers began plodding eastward along the trying terrain of the tunnel, moving at a speed of just a few miles an hour. With Hoss driving the lead white Humvee, DJ and Billy walked ahead of the vehicles for the first stretch of the tunnel to try to clear it of any debris that could cause them problems. DJ noticed how quickly the light from the base of the shaft disappeared, leaving them in darkness except for the headlights on the Hummer and the headlamps on their hard hats. After walking a decent distance, he and Billy hopped onboard the Hummers. DJ watched as they passed one five-foot-long concrete tunnel “ring” after another, going by the markers the sandhogs had spray-painted on the wall like yard lines on a football field: ring 1000, ring 1800, ring 4000.
On the drive east, the divers stopped at regular intervals along the way, to take oxygen readings and to install “mine phones” that would connect them directly to Harald in his topside trailer. These phones, which were boxy yellow consoles with old-fashioned black receivers, could be spliced into a communications wire that had been temporarily strung along the side of the tunnel. The divers stopped roughly every two miles to patch a mine phone into that wire.
They used battery-powered VHF radios to remain in contact with the standby crew back at the base of the shaft. But they found that, for some reason, when the radio was on high, it interfered with the electronics of the vehicle’s oxygen analyzer151. As they ventured deeper into the tunnel, the reception of the VHF radios turned out to be weaker than expected. The crew also lost one of the connectors on the breathing system because it wasn’t the locking type, requiring them to duct-tape the hose into place instead.
At each stop, they used their Drager handheld gas monitors. They were first testing to see when the oxygen content in the ambient air would drop below the standard 21 percent, to know when they’d have to don their facemasks. Considering how long they were going to be in the tunnel on Thursday, the divers wanted to delay turning to their life-support air supply until absolutely necessary. They knew they’d be fine with limited exposure to oxygen percentages in the upper teens. By ring 7500152, the oxygen level had slipped to around 16 percent, and the divers quickly attached the masks that connected them, through umbilicals, to the HP air bottles on the Humvee roof.
Before long the divers passed through the venturi, the division between the main tunnel and the diffuser tunnel. The latter was the outfall tunnel’s final mile, where it connected to the risers, starting with number 55 and descending to number 1 at its easternmost endpoint. Once the divers crossed into the diffuser tunnel, DJ noticed how the monotony of the view began to change. A concrete ramp on the floor and Jersey barriers coming in from the sides combined to gradually reduce the surface area. This made the Humvees’ slow ride go even more slowly. At one point, Hoss’s facemask started “free-flowing,” meaning it was pumping out too much air. The “demand” regulator was designed to give air to a diver only when he needed it, stopping it automatically when he paused to exhale. After enough tinkering with his regulator, Hoss managed to fix the problem.
A couple of divers complained that the short hoses connecting their facemasks to the bailout bottle on their hips—the emergency supply offering up to ten minutes of air—wouldn’t lock into place. They were told to duct-tape it to prevent an accidental disconnect. By the time the divers reached riser number 18, which was around the nine-mile mark, they were fast approaching the point in the tunnel where it would get too narrow for the vehicles to proceed. They couldn’t afford to take off their masks, even momentarily, since that far into the tunnel the oxygen level in the stale ambient air had fallen to a consciousness-robbing 9 percent153.
And it was 9:45 p.m. They’d arrived on site almost fifteen hours earlier, and they still had a two-hour drive back to the shaft. After doing some work at this stop, they talked to Harald by mine phone and decided to go no farther.
By the time they made it back to the base of the shaft and began driving up the steep ramp to the deck, it was after midnight. By the time they took the man cage up the shaft to topside, it was 1:15 a.m. DJ had been in the dark, dank tunnel for eighteen hours, and he was bone tired.
151 (Chapter 7, note 19)
the electronics of the vehicle’s oxygen analyzer: Ibid., July 15, 1999.
152 (Chapter 7, note 20)
By ring 7500: Kelly Mills (Kiewit/KAK manager), day planner, July 15, 1999.
153 (Chapter 7, note 21)
a consciousness-robbing 9 percent: Grob topside log, July 15, 1999.