A Granduc Story

Photo - Granduc Bunk Houses

Submitted by Art Vibert -
A personal travel diary to Granduc Mines

Raoul went over to where two men were shoveling. Ten feet away he started to probe with a long stick and soon hit a spongy spot. Pressing very lightly on the stick, he rechecked and finally said, "I think there is someone down here." The rest of us started to dig. In minutes we uncovered a body. We lifted it up and one man said, "Broken neck." At this point, there was a chap taking pictures of it all, which didn't go over very big with the rest of us. When the body was identified one of the men said, "He was talking to Oscar just before the slide so let's find Oscar." We started to dig and, about three feet away and eight feet down, found Oscar very much alive. He had been buried for 6 1/2 hours. He said it was damned cold and, to top it all off, he had been sitting in a pool of ice water.

The first indication of rescue came when Raoul's stick poking through had let in a ray of light. The question in all our minds was - how many more, like Oscar, were still down under the snow and where would we start looking for them?

We heard a helicopter about a half mile away trying to get through the falling snow. Kelly said, "That chopper has food, medical supplies, and a doctor on board." Unfortunately, the pilot could not get close enough to attempt a landing. After several attempts at trying to land he finally had to land about a mile away. Cy McLennan told the bulldozer operator to take his machine and make a road down to the Portal, then go out on the glacier and meet the doctor. The operator refused to go because of the danger, so Cy said, "I'll go with you." The two of them set out only to return two hours later. The operator had been right - it was too dangerous.

Darkness was now setting in and the men who had worked down at the powerhouse all day were returning tired and hungry. Cooking a meal for 125 men over a bonfire with very little food to start with was an impossibility. We all resigned ourselves to the fact that there was nothing more to eat but a few chocolate bars salvaged from the commissary. The temperaure was dropping and the men started talking of the possibility of more slides. There was snow still on the mountain that hadn't come down and, in the darkness, we were plenty worried. One chap said, "Disaster never strikes twice in the same spot so we should be safe."


Time about 8 p.m. The superintendent, Cy McLennan, called a meeting and it was decided that to save confusion during the rescue operations the next day, the timekeeper was to give each of the survivors a number. The injured first, the more rugged miners last. Raoul and I got our numbers - #24 and #25. Comparing numbers and trying to determine who had the high ones took our minds off the slide for a while. All this time there were rumblings of slides all around us. Each slide would start off and the sound would get closer and closer and then fade away. We would start breathing again.

We had used doors from inside the bunkhouses to keep our fire going and finally had to get a bulldozer to uncover a pile of lumber for fuel for the long night ahead.

In the dark office, Kelly was busy on the radio. The injured lay on wall to wall mattresses in the back portion of the office and the main portion of the office had standing room only by this time. Men were sitting on the floor with their feet stretched out where people tripped over them in the darkness. Some had crawled beneath a table. One man moved books and maps off a shelf and crawled on it for the night.

Raoul and I went to Cy's cabin which was just about as bad. Raoul found a chair and I got the floor. As time wore on, I got pretty stiff, so got up and went outside and stood around the fire where my wet parka froze, making my arms look like two stove pipes. I wandered back to the office and, in the darkness, found a stool that someone had just left, so there I sat.

February 19, 1965, 2:00 a.m.

I went to see Raoul. He was in the same chair, afraid to leave in case someone else took it. I said, "Six more hours and it will be daylight." He said, "No, more like two hours." He had asked a chap the time and had been informed it was 5:00 a.m. Raoul felt he had the night in and then found out he had to start all over again. So that's the way the night went. Men moving from office to fire and back again.

Daylight. The blue sky and sunlight had everyone out and bustling around. Kelly announced over his one way radio, "Weather clear." We waited for that welcome sound of a helicopter overhead. Suddenly a dark cloud started to roll in and it began snowing again. As one chap said, "Well, it has been snowing for a week, why should it stop today?" But finally a chopper. Men threw diesel fuel on the fire to guide the pilot in. He landed with two passengers, Harold Fowler and Stan Hunter, both mine officials. This chopper was from Stewart. Two of the less seriously injured were put aboard and the chopper took off. Next chopper in had food and blankets, doctor and nurse on board. The men were getting anxious now and were crowding around the landing pad making it impossible for the chopper to land. The Sikorsky S55 couldn't land on the pad so went to a clear spot about a hundred yards away. Some of the men started running down to meet it. More injured were loaded on.
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Diary - Continued