Canada – Alberta – Frank Slide

2019 JULY 6 —

To me, the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains are one of the prettiest places on earth. The huge rolling plains and wide lush valleys ad ravines with the snow capped mountains in the distance is breath-taking. It makes me feel small and wonderful. The Creator of the Universe made all this and still felt that I was important enough to be made too – that is powerful stuff!! I love being in the mountains, but I don’t think I could live there. I am too much of a flat-lander. I need to see the wide open sky all around me. I think I would grow tired of being in the shadow of a mountain the majority of the day, no matter how magnificent that mountain looks. The weather had cleared and the drive toward the mountains was, as always, beautiful.

We got to Frank too early for the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre to be open. We headed to Blairmore, a few miles away, for a mid-morning coffee and snack. Blairmore is always a cute little town to have lunch. We have never really explored more than the cafes and restaurants, but we always seem to stop whenever we are in the area. I am sure Frank has coffee shops too, but after you read about its history you will probably understand why we aren’t eager to be parked in the town.

We got to the Interpretive Centre and had to wait a few minutes for the doors to open. It gave us a good chance to walk out to the viewing platform and see, first hand, the extent of the slide. There is a huge gash ripped away from the side of Turtle Mountain and it looked like the slide just happened yesterday. Wispy grayish clouds looked like billows of dust still coming off the mountain. Boulders the size of a car were strewn across the valley. It looked like a giant bulldozer had just gone through. There was not a blade of grass or a whisper of a tree to be seen, except at the outer edges. It was eerie looking and I could feel the solemnity.

We read all of the information placards that gave all the facts, figures and details of the slide. What struck me was “Had you been standing here at 4:10 on the morning of April 29 in 1903, you would have survived… unless you had a weak heart.” Only then did I notice the viewing platform was resting beside a huge boulder. Yikes!!

The Centre was finally open. On the door, at eye level, was a sign that warned people that a bear had been spotted nearby for the three days prior. Did I mention there are hiking trails? Above the door was a sign that read “Welcome. We have stories to tell you.” And do they ever!

Frank, Alberta was named after Henry Frank. He was a mining mogul from Montana. He and his partner Samuel Gebo owned the Canadian-American Coal and Coke Company. The town was created at the base of Turtle Mountain to support the mine. The local First Nations people called Turtle Mountain “the mountain that moves” and refused to camp in its vicinity. Maybe someone should have been paying attention to the legend.

On 29 April 1903 at 4:10 in the morning “the mountain that moves” let loose 82 million tonnes (90 million tons) of limestone that was nearly one kilometre wide (3300 ft), 425 metres high (1394 ft), and 150 metres thick (492 ft). The sheet of rock smashed apart as it careened into the valley. It flowed down like a river of boulders following the contour of the land. It was travelling at 112 km/hr (70 mph). The back of the slide never overtook the front. The rolling and grinding boulders created sparks like lightening as they crashed into one another. The sound was deafening. The ground shook. The slide plowed through the river and picked up a wall of mud and kept on going toward the edge of town. Between 70 and 90 people were killed in their sleep. It was all over in 90 seconds.

When it was all over 3 sq km (1.2 sq miles) of the valley was buried between one metre (3 ft) to 46 metres (150 ft) of boulders. Where the valley walls were steep the boulders stopped abruptly. Where the slope was gradual, the boulders came to a messy stop with some bouncing far beyond the wreckage.

Thankfully, only the edge of town was hit, the main part of the town was spared. That said, two ranches, some houses, a shoe shop, and seven miners cottages were buried. There was a migrant construction camp on that edge of town, and no one knows for certain how many men may have been there. About 100 townspeople lived there, but not all died. Some were pulled from the mud and wreckage and survived. Others, like a small baby, were found on top of the boulders, bruised and battered, but alive. 23 of the estimated 115 people caught in the path of the slide miraculously survived.

There are some amazing stories from other survivors. One fellow had his sister visiting from out of town. They decided to stay in the hotel that night so that she could be closer to the train station and not have to hurry in the morning. His house and shoe shop were buried. . A work crew of 100 railway workers were cursing their bad luck when the train failed to stop and pick them the day before the slide. They were all headed to the construction camp in Frank. They would have all been buried in the slide. A teenage girl worked at the boarding house in town and for the first time ever her mother told her to stay there that night rather than walk home in the dark. Her Mother and siblings were killed. Whereas a stroke of fate saved her life, an opposite stroke of fate took her father’s life. He was working night shift in the mine. 10 minutes before the slide he and another fellow decided to take their lunch break with the weighman outside of the mine, at the scale. Had he stayed in the mine with the other men, he would have survived

The train engineer had just finished shunting coal cars near the scales and was headed in to town. He heard a loud crack, like a giant rifle, above him (remember, this was a noisy steam engine). He knew something was wrong. He put on the steam and yelled for his two brakemen to grab onto the handrails. With his two brakemen clinging to the train, he crossed over the bridge just ahead of the avalanche. Looking back all they saw was a wall of dust. They knew the three men at the scales were dead.

The two brakemen knew that a passenger train with 80 people was heading west towards Frank and due soon! If they didn’t warn the engineer, in the dark and with the dust, he would hit the wall of rock at full speed. In an incredible act of bravery, both brakemen scrambled over the twisted rocks, in the choking dust, with only a lantern to guide their way. God knows how they knew which way to go! One fellow tired out but the other kept going. He managed to wave his lantern and stop the train. The CPR rewarded him with $25 (a considerable amount in those days and nearly $3000 in today’s money) and a letter of commendation.

The 17 men remaining in the mine knew something terrible had happened. The mine shook and a blast of air knocked them off their feet. The main entry was blocked with rocks. The lower entry was filling with water that was backing up from the blocked river. Methane gas was building up. The men were trapped. Someone remembered that the coal seams run nearly vertical and one seam further back from the entrance actually outcropped on the mountain face. They began to “mine” their way out, knowing that coal would be easier to dig than rock. For 13 hours they dug for their lives, taking turns in the narrow space. They tunnelled through 6.5 metres (21 ft) of coal and 3 metres (10 ft) of limestone before a pick finally broke through to fresh air. They came out above the rescue crew working at the main entrance trying to break through the rocks to save the trapped miners. They also had a birds eye view of the devastation. What a horrific sight to see giant boulders where your home and family once were.

Humans were not the only casualties in the slide. Horses were used inside of the mine to pull the coal carts. A month after the slide, while assessing the damage inside the mine, a group of men found one horse, Charlie, still alive!! He had survived for 31days in the dark. He had chewed timbers for food, and drank dirty seepage water. They were so happy to find him they promptly gave him a good feed of oats – which proved too much for the starving horse’s constitution, and he died. 4 other horses died in the mine that fateful night.

Two kilometers of the CPR line was buried. Immediately, work began to rebuild the line. Men who had barely missed being killed in the slide were soon joined by 900 more men. No doubt the 100 men who had previously missed the train were among them. Initially a rough wagon road was built around the slide. Passengers had to disembark on one side of the slide and be transported to the other side for another awaiting train. 3 weeks after the slide the trains were running through Frank once again. The rail line took advantage of the large boulders and used a lot of the Frank Slide rocks to fill washouts further down the line well into the 1960s.

Nearly everyone was affected by the deadly slide. Those who survived showed more resilience than I would have had. Within 2 weeks people were allowed to return to their homes and soon it was business as usual, albeit with one eye on the mountain. The mine was reopened, which says a lot about the importance of coal in those days. The road was eventually built through the slide. When the mine finally closed in 1918, due to a fire that may still be burning underground, the one-industry town dried up. People moved away. Maybe there is no coffee shop in Frank after all….

So what exactly caused “the mountain that moves” to finally take off? Old limestone layers of rock sit on top of younger sandstone, mudstone and coal. In the forming of the mountain, millions of years ago, the horizontal layers were pushed upwards into an arch – a mountain. These layers of rock were now more vertical than horizontal. The folded rock layers acted like slippery playing cards – slipping right into the valley. The slide happened at the end of April, when the weather thaws during the day then freezes at night. It was reported that night was especially cold. Water caught in large fault lines would have frozen, and thereby expanding, and pushed the limestone wedge free. Also, because of the unstable structure of the mountain, digging around its foundation (coal mining) also compromised the entire mountain’s stability.

The coal seams were nearly vertical, 82%. The coal was mined from large chambers, 120 metres high (394) and 45 metres long (128 ft). The miners had to use ladders and ropes to reach the top of the coal face. Huge pillars of coal, 12 metres square (130 sq. ft.), were left between the chambers to support the roof. The pillars would then be mined to finish the area. The coal practically mined itself, sometimes falling in chunks, indicating that there was a lot of pressure pushing down on it. Miners began reporting there were more tremors and cracking timbers than usual, but the mine managers were giddy with the production. They stopped paying men by the amount of coal they mined, and started paying them day wages. The company was making money hand over fist. However, the disappearing vertical coal seam was contributing to the loosening of the slippery limestone. And the mountain moved – big time!

The mountain continues to move. Modern technology is now used to monitor the rate of movement every hour of every day. The south peak has huge cracks 2 metres (6.5 ft) wide and 20-30 metres deep (66-100 ft). Should they fill up with water and freeze, it could push another wedge of 15 million tons of limestone down. It is currently moving 2-3 mm per year – about the thickness of 2 dimes. It is not a matter of if the mountain will come down, but when. Hopefully, there will be enough warning to evacuate residents and close the road and railway to prevent another tragedy.

SIDE NOTE: Henry Lupin Frank died of “uncertain circumstances” at the age of 57. Some speculate that depression or mental illness was a contributing factor. Samuel W. Gebo committed suicide by placing his head in a gas oven. He was 78.

There was a small display on the Hillcrest Mine Disaster where 189 men died on 19 June 1914. It was half of the mine’s total workforce. Everyone in the community lost at least one family member, and sometimes more – whether it were brothers, sons, husbands, or fathers. 90 women were widowed and 250 children orphaned. The men were mostly in their 20s and early 30s.

Hillcrest was considered one of the safest and best run mine at the time. Three separate inquiries were held into the cause of the disaster. Not one could definitely prove the cause. Chief Mine Inspector for Alberta said, “From the evidence and examination (I) thought that some extraordinary and unforeseen combination of circumstances had been responsible for the explosion and could not suggest how the gas had been ignited.”

What was known was that early that morning the fireboss had completed his inspection and reported a small amount of methane gas, but not enough to worry him as there was always a low amount. The moisture levels were adequate enough to keep the highly explosive coal dust from igniting. With the safety checks done, the men began to enter the mine for their shift.

There was a system of keeping track of who was in the mine. Each man had a round and a square numbered metal tag assigned to him. When the men picked up their miner’s lamp the timekeeper would put the square tag on a check board. The miner kept the round tag on himself, usually tucked into a pocket or his boot. When the miner returned his lamp the square tag was removed from the board and handed back to the miner. If any square tags were left on the board at the end of a shift someone was sent into the mine to search for the missing miner.

A different fireboss was about to ignite some charges when a huge explosion erupted nearby, which triggered a second and possibly a third blast. They know he didn’t fire his charge because the firing cable was still wrapped around his waist when he was found. He was killed straight away.

One survivor said he knew something was wrong when the sound coming down the tunnel was different than a dynamite explosion.

Another man “smelled a whiff of combustion” and told his brother to run – fast. “Out we get Dave and quick, the mine’s up” They warned everyone they came across to run, too. He survived and made three trips back into the mine “to see if we could get anybody alive.”

Anyone near the blast was killed outright. Most of the dead only had minor scrapes or burns on their bodies. They had succumbed to the “afterdamp”, the poisonous mix of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. One man who survived wrote, “You know it must be an easy death to b suffocated with gas, for I felt no pain and would never have known the difference had I never been brought to. I am glad to know that the poor fellows down there suffered no pain.”

The rescue team went back into the mine without any protective masks. They would get dizzy and weak and begin to vomit. They would come back out for fresh air, then charge back in. They managed to pull out everyone except one, who was never found. Some of the bodies were unidentifiable, except for their round tag.

The heat from the explosion was so intense that in some places the coal was turned to coke. It normally takes 48 hours of extreme heat in ovens to do that above ground.

As with the Frank Slide there were fateful stories that kept some men out of the mine, saving their lives, while others died who were not supposed to be there. One man traded shifts with another so that he could be at the train station to meet his wife. He never made it. Two men were turned away because the timekeeper could smell alcohol on their breath. If they were married, I am sure their wives were now happy they had drunk too much. One man managed to get out, only to discover his 3 sons were still inside. He raced back in, only to join them in their doomed fate.

The explosion and smoke pouring out of the mine vents bought the entire town to the mine. Women and children wandered in a daze, not knowing the fate of their loved ones. As the bodies were retrieved, they were washed so that they could be identified then laid out for the families. Burials began two days later. Two long trenches were dug and the coffins were laid like cord wood, side by side. The town of 1000 was instantly reduced by 20%.

The incident was the largest mining disaster in Canadian history. It prompted changes to Mine Regulations as well as the formation of the Workers Compensation Board. Hitherto, families had to sue the company for financial compensation. The board enacted a no-fault plan which granted automatic compensation for occupational injury or death.

The Interpretive Centre is very well laid out and informative, but we had enough grim stories. It was time to hit the road again. We were headed into British Columbia with our first stop at Fernie, BC.