I got assigned to do some brick work at the basic oxygen furnace. This furnace was an odd contraption that looked for all the world like a giant thermos bottle. It was about 30 feet tall with a bottle shape and about 10 feet in diameter. It had a narrow neck at the top, and they used it to burn the impurities out of the molten iron. First they'd fill it about half full of molten iron, then insert a big metal tube into it and blow pure oxygen in. It looked like a giant fireworks display when they did that, because the oxygen would cause anything other than iron to burst into violent flames and sparks. The iron would get white hot too....so the heat was intense and almost overpowering.
To protect the furnace bottle floor on the inside from melting too, they had a layer of protective long bricks made of a mix of asbestos and silica. They were unique in shape being narrow on one end, but then expanding towards the outside of the vessel. They were each about two feet long, and maybe 3 inches square on the small end, and six inches square on the big end. They nested together in a very interesting spiral pattern that looked a lot like the seeds of a sunflower when you looked down into the bottle. As they used it, the bricks would slowly burn away and eventually they all needed to be replaced. They had two basic oxygen furnaces, and so could shut one down while the other was still operating.
My job was to do down inside the bottle, tear out the old bricks at the bottom and then lay new ones. Access was a challenge because of the narrow neck, so they had designed a special open cage elevator that a crane would drop into a vertical bottle. It was just big enough across to ride in if you kept your arms at your sides to fit into it. Some of the guys were too big around to fit, so they picked us smaller people to do the down side work. They used the elevator to drop us in, and all the tools and materials we needed too. We would load up the platform with broken brick in buckets and they would take it back up again. It was not a place for anyone who is uncomfortable in small tight places. I have to admit that it did bother me a bit, especially when I looked up a the little opening far above me.
I got assigned to this detail three days in a row, and so got pretty good at it. We got the old bricks out quickly, and then started dropping in the new bricks. Te ensure they were solidly in place, we used a dry mortar approach. They would send us down bags of very finely powdered sand and asbestos. We would put a couple of the bricks in place, and then slowly pour a little of the mortar powder into the cracks between them. This way the molten iron could not flow between the bricks and get the to outside steel vessel walls.
All was going smoothly until the unexpected happened. Someone who was loading up materials on the topside stacked a bunch of bricks into the elevator, and then a bunch of mortar bags on top of them. As the elevator came down with that load, the pile of stuff slid sideways. A couple of bags of the dry mortar first hit the sides of the elevator cage and then slipped over some more. They got caught on some exposed angle iron near the top of the vessel, and it cut the bags wide open. Immediately all the contents spilled out into space and the whole place was filled with dense white fog of fine sand and asbestos powder.
It's hard to describe just how bad it was in there. We were in a total white out, but our eyes were blind anyway from the dust and tears. Then we started breathing the dust and we all coughed until I thought we'd lose our lungs on the floor. We put our hands over our mouths in a useless gesture to cut the dust. Then the worst thing of all happened. The elevator ground to a halt about half way down, still spilling large quantities of dust into the air.
We were trapped and couldn't see and couldn't breathe. I pulled my kerchief out of my back pocket and wrapped it over my mouth. There was a lot of profanity flying, and I'm sure I was helping. The guys on the topside started yelling too. They told us to hold on and tried to reverse the direction of the elevator, but it was totally stuck. The dust had spilled into the gears and it wouldn't move up or down. It was stuck firmly half way down, but way above our heads. The full impact of our situation began to sink in. We were trapped in a place where it was almost impossible to see or breathe.
I had to try very hard not to panic, and worked on slowing my breath and keeping my eyes closed. After what seemed like forever, another crew came to help out the topside people. They couldn't get the elevator to work either, and so finally decided to call in a crane and pull the whole unit straight up out of the vessel...leaving us behind below. They really had no other option, but it took them a long time to get a crane in place and then pull the elevator up and out. Once it was gone, I was hoping for some fresh air to come down, but it didn't seem to help a bit. We were all gasping for air, coughing, and one guy was throwing up from coughing so hard. We all had tears streaming down our faces and couldn't see much of anything.
At first the top crew tried to figure out a way to get us out of there, but didn't have ladders or lines that would work. They finally decided the only option was the get the elevator working again. So, they got busy with air hoses and brushes and finally got the gears all cleaned. They did a quick power check to see if it was working again, and then dropped the elevator back down into the bottle. They could only take out one of at a time, and it seemed like forever before I got my turn...the last one out. They put us all into the back of a pickup truck and drove us over to the infirmary. They washed out our eyes with something, and let us take a shower to get all the powder off us. They said we'd be fine, and just take a day off. I didn't know any better, and this was long before people understood the impact of asbestos on lungs. Two days later I was back at work again.
I remember being tired a lot after that, but gradually recovered. It took weeks for the cough to totally disappear. One thing that I really noticed much later though was that I wasn't as good at distance running as I had been before. I just wrote it off to lack of training and getting older.
Years later I got a great job at Boeing, and when I went into Field Service they subjected me to the first indepth physical of my life. I got my first chest x-ray and the doctor came out to ask me some questions. He said I had a lot scarring in my lungs and wanted to know why. I was at a loss for awhile to explain it, but finally made the link to Armco. The body is smart and when your lungs get bad stuff in them, it puts scars around it to protect you. So...my body did it's job, and now I've got a bunch of nice scars in my lungs as my souvenir of Armco. Of course asbestos exposure can cause lung cancer, but I'm just hoping that it stays right there where it belongs, totally surrounded and isolated from the rest of me.
I don't worry about it much, figuring that if it was going to cause cancer I'd already be dead. But I can't help but count my blessings for having survived that awful day. Many times when I go outside I take a full fresh breath of air, and am so grateful that I can do that still. So, here again I'm feeling thankful for air and life on the eve of Thanksgiving. I do wonder at times if the other five guys who were down there too are as lucky as I am......
Lessons learned: Never take the little things in life for granted, they can be taken away in a single second of surprise. Enjoy the moment, it's all we ever have anyway.
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