Deadly Chutzpah

Unless I am mistaken, it was back in the Nineties that the government of Indonesia decided that, because they had so little land and because pretty much all of that land was being put to use, they would construct a nuclear power station in the crater of a dormant (not extinct) volcano. At the time this seemed like the ultimate what-were-they-thinking act of stupidity; and just about every industrialized nation responded with its characteristic nationalist stamp of derision. However, as we get more and more background on the Crandall Canyon mine catastrophe, we have to ask just who came up with the bright idea of drilling a deep mine into a seismically active formation in the first place. The only really substantive difference is that the mine puts fewer lives at risk than a nuclear reactor would, but both acts of thoughtlessness are in the same league. This has not received a lot of coverage; but, now that there has been a second cave-in at Crandall Canyon, Associated Press writer Paul Foy has had the good sense to acquire some seismological background.

It turns out that there is a technical term for what caused these cave-ins. It is called a "mountain bump." Foy describes it as the phenomenon "in which shifting ground forces chunks of rock from the walls." Since that rock bears much of the structural weight of the mine passages, dislodging any of it jeopardizes the structural integrity of the entire passage. None of this is beyond the scope of Geology 101, nor is the fact that the mountain formations in Utah are still "young" enough to be seismically active (not unlike the fault lines through California). So trying to dig a network of mine tunnels into such a formation is essentially an act of chutzpah against nature (defying the earth to hold still or else, so to speak); and sending miners into that network compounds the chutzpah by setting the authority of the mine owner above those forces of nature.

So, following the usual path of analysis, what are the consequences to date of these acts of chutzpah? As of August 6 six men were trapped more than three miles into the network, and rescue workers still have not located them. Then, last night at 6:39 PM local time, a second "mountain bump" induced a second cave-in, which killed three of the rescue workers and injured at least six others. Sometimes the substance of the Chutzpah of the Week award turns out to be little more than a loud public raspberry, but this week's award should be presented as a Badge of Shame to the owner of the Crandall Canyon mine.