as you can." "What's the trouble, Gene?" asks Scanlan, overhearing. "There's a fire down there."

Those are chilling words in the confined workings of a deep underground mine, where even a small, contained blaze in an oil drum, or from a single piece of machinery, can generate enough carbon monoxide to kill anyone working "inby" or downwind. And most of the mine is inby the 3700-foot level.

Besides being the main travelway from the No. 10 shaft to the Jewell shaft, the 3700 level also houses the underground foremen's office-the "Blue Room"-and the maintenance shops-the pipe, electric, machine, warehouse, and drill shops. About 11:35 A.M., shortly after they finished lunch, two miners stepped out, of the electric shop into the drift, smelled smoke, and yelled "Fire!" Thirty feet down thedrift in the Blue Room, foremen Harvey Dionne and Gene Johnson grabbed their helmets and battery packs and ran out into the tunnel. What happened on 3700 during the next thirty minutes cannot be told with any certainty. By one account it was Dionne and Johnson who finally made the decision to evacuate. By another account, it was Dionne and foreman Jim Bush: In any event, before any decision was made, the foremen looked for the fire, following the smoke west toward the Jewell shaft 800 feet until they reached the 910 raise, a vertical shaft which rose 300 feet through old, worked-out portions of the mine. There the smoke seemed heaviest, but they couldn't see where it was coming from. Dionne crawled up onto the timber supports,