Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917

Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917
Michael Punke

From the #1 international bestselling author of The Revenant – the book that inspired the award-winning movie – comes the remarkable true story of the worst mining disaster in American history.

In 1917, the lives of a company of miners changed forever when the underground labyrinth of tunnels in which they worked burst into flames. Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead.

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917

Michael Punke

Copyright (#ulink_289e804f-0138-5c40-97c6-10beb91ad4f5)

Published by The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by The Borough Press 2016

Originally published in 2006 by Hyperion Books

Source for diagram on here (#ud3cf2985-4c32-5af4-9850-c850648f1207):

Bureau of Mines, ‘Lessons from the Granite Mountain Shaft Fire, Butte’, 1922

Copyright © Michael Punke 2006

Michael Punke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover photographs © C. Owen Smithers Collection Butte-Silver Bow Public Archive (front); Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (fire and landscape)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008189310

Ebook Edition © February 2016 ISBN: 9780008189327

Version: 2016-02-11

Dedication (#ulink_c8b93f69-a331-5b19-90f0-4ac6216be7b9)

Dedicated to the people of Butte, Montana

Epigraph (#ulink_ba03c132-dff2-585a-91ad-21062eb97d4f)

Tell her we done the best we could, but the cards were against us.

—J.D. MOORE,

JUNE 9, 1917

CONTENTS

Cover (#u403c9171-5b65-5889-84f7-5637fe7a4bb5)

Title Page (#u4ec84e2c-731d-57d1-94e5-7ef9cbc8b448)

Copyright (#uc40869a3-e03c-514a-bb6a-18a4f3cfa680)

Dedication (#ua167b9e0-cda2-5d4b-b4f8-7e636b12d622)

Epigraph (#u77f164c1-115a-5057-939e-084a6c2dc994)

One: “THERE IS A SIGN” (#u65d90193-6af9-5956-886b-c45496866ddd)

Two : “LIKE A GIGNTIC TORCH” (#u71fa4428-e6f1-5893-96c8-cf20ff900831)

Three: “THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH” (#u58b799cd-5fd8-5278-89ca-2532824cbd5d)

Four: “WHAT MEN WILL DO” (#u6a1d01ec-29f6-5fb9-8f38-889ad6b71e6b)

Five: “SWEETENED CORRUPTION” (#u90570c5c-46e8-5971-8a4b-7df50a3b5e85)

Six: “HELMET MEN BRAVING DEATH” (#u51d2162e-0b36-5369-8ce1-49971397fc7e)

Seven: “STANDARD OIL COFFINS” (#u5ae0bb88-757e-51a5-b2f9-4c206f253d76)

Eight: “THEN WE MET DUGGAN” (#u44e65442-d468-5dc9-bc01-9f5d4a186742)

Nine: “HEY JACK, WHAT THE HELL” (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten: “IF THE WORST COMES” (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven: “DREADING TO LOOK” (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve : “NOW IS THE TIME” (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen: “MEN ALIVE!” (#litres_trial_promo)