Chapter 5: The Demolition

On Monday morning, I headed to work and it was Mike, Joe and I who were going to set the explosives. It was funny, when we got there, there were only three protesters. After all, this was Earth Day and a week ago, there were twenty protesters bothering us. Maybe my talk did some good.

These three probably were just there to watch us. A few hours from now, there would probably be hundreds of people watching the actual explosion. We had a chain link fence to keep people as far away from the area as possible. There were a dozen warning signs posted also. We didn't want to take any chances of anyone getting hurt.

It was a very delicate operation, and I was lowered into several holes to place the explosive charges. It was unbelievable how many underground shafts were under this strip mine. It was a very dangerous area. That is why it needed to be caved in, less someone would later be involved in an accidental cave-in if the ground were to give-way

We were done in time for lunch and went to get a bite to eat. We completely locked up the area and went to lunch. We had about four hours before we would do our actual demolition for the TV cameras. People like to watch the explosion. We wanted to show them we cared and how we reclaimed the area afterwards; the grading and planting of trees.

We were at the dining tent when we heard a woman calling for help. She was running toward our tent saying her friends fell in the hole. We had no idea what she was talking about. We told her to slow down so we could understand her. It was the female student who was picketing with two other male friends. We finally figured out what she was saying.

After we left our demolition site, her two friends climbed the fence to get a closer look at the site. She heard them scream and disappear. She thought they might have fallen into one of the wells.

Joe, Mike and I jumped up, got in our six wheeler with the girl, and told her to point out exactly where she saw her friends go down. It was the area that we would be caving-in. I got out of the cart and walked slowly over to where she thought they had fallen in. The ground there was very soft and I crawled over to the opening.

The girl told me that the boys were Jason and Brad, so I called out to them. "Jason, Brad, can you hear me?"

A few seconds later, I heard a voice. "Help me, get me out of here. We're trapped in this hole and can't get out."

"Calm down. We're here to help you but it's going to take some time. Are you Jason or Brad?"

"I'm Jason. Brad isn't moving. I think he might be dead."

"Easy now, Jason, you're in panic mode. You need to calm down. Can you feel if Brad has a pulse? You can feel it by his neck or his wrist. Will you do that for me, please?"

"Yes, I feel a pulse but he isn't moving."

"Ok, he's just unconscious. He'll be alright." I really had no idea if he was alright or not but I couldn't let Jason get any worse."

I sent Mike and Joe after the crane and told them to take the girl to the guards until the police arrived. We needed to know exactly what happened. I told Jason that it would be a while until the guys came back with the crane but I would stay there with him and talk to him.

I was able to shine a flashlight down the hole and see the two boys. I know they were two college students but they were acting like kids. They sure lacked common sense. We found out later that they were both drinking beer all night and were still drinking this morning. They had told each other how brave they were and weren't afraid to see how far they could go near the demolition site. The girl with them told them how immature they were but they went anyway.