INCIDENT AT YORK NO. 1.LONGVIEW FIELDWINTER OF 1939As told by Ralph H. CarrOur crew was drilling on York no. 1, working for Newell andChandler. Curly Young was the driller, I was the catheadman. We were at 4500 feet.We had lost a bit, and had been fishing unsuccessfully forseveral days. We finally gave up fishing. A lot of cavinghad occurred after we stopped active drilling to fish.A shooter from Flagstaff, Arizona was called in to blast thecaving out of the way. We ran a pipe down as far as thecaving. Then the shooter put three capsules ofnitroglycerine (20 quarts) down through the drill pipe on awire measuring line. A detonator with a timer was set onthe last capsule, to allow us plenty of time to pull backout of the hole and clear people out of the way of theblast.Some delay occurred when we broke a chain coming out of thehole. Repairs were made, but took awhile. When the laststand of pipe came up, there was a capsule sticking part waybelow the pipe! Then, in racking the pipe, the danglingcapsule was bent into an L-shape! Everyone froze!Quickly the racker broke the last section of pipe from thestand. Now we needed the shooter! He was nowhere to befound! Finally he was located, sleeping in his truck in theshade at the edge of the lease. His job, he thought wasover. He would stay till the bang occurred.The shooter came up to the floor at once. One look at themangled capsule protruding from the pipe sufficed. “Don’tbang anything and don’t spill anything!” he ordered.Meanwhile, both the crew going off shift and the crew comingon were gathered round. Word of something happening hadspread. Even the renter from the farm buildings adjacent tothe site was there with his dog.The danger became obvious. The renter was heard to say tohis dog, “Come on, Bruno, this is no place for the likes ofus!” as he strode off. The two crews gave a wider berth tothe rig, but were too curious to leave altogether.The shooter ordered water. I brought a five gallon pailfull. He swore. “Less than half of that!”.We slopped most of the water out. Then we positioned thepipe with the dangling capsule over the pail of water. Withhis pocket knife, the shooter made a small slit in thealuminum casing of the capsule, letting the nitro trickleslowly, gently into the pail of water. Gingerly, he slidthe empty capsule out of the pipe.The onlookers retreated farther.The bent capsule had blocked both the others; they werestill in the pipe! The second capsule was slid out gently.The same with the third one, which still held the timer anddetonator. The timer proved to be simply a dollar watch!The shooter disarmed it with only minutes to spare.We carried the undamaged capsules, which were about 2½inches in diameter and nine feet long, very, very carefullyoff the floor, down the steps and over to the storagecontainer in the shooter’s truck.The damaged capsule, the pail of water and nitroglycerinewere carefully hauled to mid-ice on the Highwood River,upriver from the rig. When everyone was clear, the shooterfired his twenty-two into the pile of debris.There was one hell of a bang! Water, ice, snow, mud, etc.,flew high and wide! It seemed to take minutes to fall backto earth. When the debris settled a hole nearly an acrewide was left in the ice.