They got a million dollar grant from USDA to fix things, it seems.
EDIT: This is another example of where the early news gets reported widely and the results don't get any attention. One of the "little" flaws in news coverage.
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Tombstone's tunnels threaten tourism; Merchants blame TV broadcasts for decrease in summer's profits
by Robert M. Engstrom
The Tombstone Epitaph
The labyrinth of century-old abandoned silver mines beneath the streets of this tough, Old West town may threaten tourist trade more than the historic buildings and boardwalks on the sinking streets above.
When international television reports announced the historic areas of this town of 1,300 were caving in, tourism sank along with the ground on Toughnut Street.
A state mine inspector's report filed July 24 emphasized the severity of the problem. Angry Tombstone merchants blamed cable news coverage and local news reports for a slow summer tourist season in 1997.
A creeping depression in the street spanning a 60-foot area was noticed in mid-July. The sinking ground triggered an inspection of the Good Enough mine shaft below.
State Mine Inspector Douglas K. Martin warned Tombstone businesses July 24 that evacuation of some areas near the sinkhole might be necessary.
Threatened businesses included The Rose Tree Museum and Nellie Cashman's Restaurant and residents living in apartments on the north side of Toughnut Street. Cracks in the museum's adobe block wall were the first visible evidence of the subsiding ground. Homes and structures on the south side of Toughnut Street were not threatened.
"If there is a major collapse of the underground mine, the buildings and street could fall approximately 50 to 80 feet into the earth," Martin said July 25.
"The area is in imminent danger of collapse," he added.
Tombstone city officials did not seem worried. Alex H. Gradillas, Tombstone's director of public works, said, "The only thing that could fall into that stope is the Rose Tree's back wall."
Brenda Reger, owner of the Buford House Bed and Breakfast, first heard about the sinkhole crisis when a yearly visitor from Sydney, Australia, called to ask where she would be after the evacuation
"What evacuation?" Reger asked.
Her friend described news reports on Australian television about the National Guard conducting a forced evacuation of Tombstone as the entire town crumbled into the maze of mine shafts and tunnels honey-combing the area.
Anita Skinner, owner of Nellie Cashman's Restaurant, estimated her business lost $2,000 during July and August because television reports scared away tourists.
"People are afraid the whole town is going to sink, thanks to CNN and the Tucson stations," Skinner said.
News Director Forrest Carr of Tucson television station KGUN channel 9 said, "Tombstone may be a small town, but it casts a big shadow as far as the history of the West is concerned. "Any news out of Tombstone is going to get attention," he said.
Carr said he did not personally receive any calls about his station's coverage of the sinkhole, but there was "some feedback about negative publicity" from the July broadcasts that was discussed at the station's editorial meetings.
"I think our reporting was balanced and fair," Carr said. "Anybody who is the subject of negative publicity is not going to be happy about it."
Cable News Network's director in Atlanta said the station would not have any comment and referred the Epitaph's inquiry to its Los Angeles bureau. Staff at that bureau did not return an Epitaph reporter's telephone calls.
Skinner wanted to know who would reimburse her and the employees for lost revenues in the event of an evacuation.
Gabe Brett, owner of the Doll House Museum, called the television news reports "irresponsible and sensational."
"They took the mine inspector's report and blew it way out of proportion and it reduced the number of tourists coming to town last summer," Brett said. "They should know better than that."
Rose Tree Museum owner Burton R. Devere was forced to close a platform area where tourists viewed the huge rose tree. He was concerned the cracked wall could fall and injure a tourist.
"The television reports definitely affected our business," Devere said.
"The number of tourists coming to Tombstone has dropped by 50 percent," he said. "I've been inside the mine and I might lose part of my back wall, but the buildings aren't in any danger," said Devere, a retired mine engineer.
The museum averages about 30 visitors a day during the summer. After the sinkhole news went world-wide the museum's daily visitors dropped to fewer than a dozen, museum employee Phyllis Jefferies said.
Martin said Deputy Inspector David Hamm reported being told there were more visitors than normal in Tombstone the first week in August because people were coming to see the sinkhole. Martin did not reveal Hamm's source.
When one newspaper asked Tombstone visitor Denise McAllister about the sinkhole, she said, "Oh, really? I didn't hear a word."
Mine inspections revealed that chunks of rock the size of automobiles had fallen from the stope ceiling of the mine shaft, and the ground above was sinking daily at a rate of a half-inch. A stope is an enlarged, underground area of the mine where ore has been removed.
The Million Dollar stope, running directly beneath Toughnut Street, is part of the Good Enough mine, owned by the Nebraska-based Tombstone Development Co. The area of the stope causing the problem measures about 160 by 120 feet wide and 80 feet deep. The mine has been inactive for more than 75 years, since TombstoneÍs silver mining business declined as the ore deposits were depleted.
Mine owners were notified of the problem by the State Mine Inspector, cited for failing to maintain the property and given 60 days to present a plan of compliance with Arizona mine safety statutes. The owners failed to meet that deadline and were cited a second time 60 days later.
"There's not really much else we can do," said Assistant State Mine Inspector William Hawes. "The most we could do is cite them with a Class II misdemeanor. And that's not a heck of a lot."
City officials erected barricades at both ends of a one-block area of Toughnut Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, losing a number of parking spots for tourists, Tombstone's major source of income. The closure forced delivery trucks to use historic Allen Street, the center of Tombstone's tourist trade, causing minor traffic problems.
Based on advice from former mining engineers living in Tombstone, an inspection conducted by the mine owners and the fact that the subsidence had stabilized by the end of July and was no longer sinking at a steady rate, city officials downplayed the extent of the danger, deciding not to declare an emergency.
"A very localized area is involved and it poses very little danger to the public," then City Clerk Henry Harvey said. "We invite the public to come down and take a look at it."
"The ones who come to see the sinkhole are disappointed because there's nothing to see," Skinner said.
Jerome Neidfelt, president of the Tombstone Development Co., said a survey of the mine in the first week of August identified the area where the boulders had fallen. Corrective actions were taken to reroute drainage near the sinkhole, fence off the affected area and seal the mine entrance on the south edge of town, Neidfelt said.
In August, Mayor Delmas E. "Gene" Harper said, "The mine owners have done everything the law requires them to do. We are waiting to hear what they plan to do about stabilizing the ground. Then we'll fix our street."
Mine owners are not obligated to fill in the stope or reduce the risk of collapse under existing state laws.
From July to December, the city, the State Mine Inspector's office and the mine's owner continued to monitor the sinkhole. The ground subsided about 18 inches in the first two weeks and appeared to have stopped sinking. Vandals cut the lock off the door sealing the mine entrance and subsequent inspections revealed signs of illegal entries on three occasions. Several innovative but impractical plans to fill the mine stope were presented to the City Council, including one suggestion that the stope be stuffed with old tires and sand.
"That just won't work," Harper said. "Before the stope can be filled it has to be sealed off, and that's a bigger job than it sounds like. That stope runs quite a ways down Toughnut Street and Tombstone doesn't have the money for a big project like that."
No plan to back-fill the mine and pressure-grout the surface has been accepted. For five months the street remained barricaded, but the sinkhole's appearance remained un-changed. The cracks in the museum's wall stopped growing and the number of tourists visiting Tombstone has increased.
Allen Street merchants reported sales for November to be as good or better than the previous year. Harper said city sales tax revenues for November indicated business in the town was back to normal levels.
Skinner said her restaurant lost $10,000 in business between July and December. "It really hurts a small business like mine," Skinner said. "It's a dirty shame."
Skinner blamed television reports and the failure of city officials to respond to the negative reports for her decreased business.
A political struggle between Tombstone's Chamber of Commerce and a merchant group over control of city bed-tax revenues designated to promote tourism for the town prevented an organized response to the television stations' reports on the magnitude of the problem. Reger, volunteer manager of the Visitors Center, said, "The arguing among local groups probably resulted in no one correcting the news reports."
In December, Assistant State Mine Inspector Hawes said, "I don't believe there will be a cataclysmic event, but buildings may be damaged and walls may sag. The problem isn't going to go away."
"The heat's off on the town sinking," Harper said Dec. 22. "That's over."
The sinkhole changed from the inconvenience of a blocked street to a declared state of emergency after the marshal's office received a report of a 3- to 6-inch opening on the surface of Toughnut Street Jan. 2. During the next three days the hole widened to 4 by 8 feet in diameter. The collapsing ground exposed an 8-inch sewer line that cracked, spewing sewage into the century-old Good Enough mine below.
Mayor Harper declared a state of emergency because businesses connected to the sewer line were threatened with a loss of service.
Tim Rowe, an Arizona Department of Environmental Quality engineer, told Harper that raw sewage spilling into the mine might seep into the groundwater.
Harper said declaring the broken pipe an emergency was the first step in securing funding and assistance from the state and county to repair the damaged pipe. Cochise County supervisors approved Harper's re-quest for $10,000 in emergency funds.
"Finding $10,000 for a job like this is difficult for a small town like Tombstone," Harper said.
Work crews knocked down a section of the Rose Tree Museum's wall to get a backhoe in to excavate the area around the pipe. The leaning wall, cracked by the sinking ground, posed a risk of collapsing onto the workers.
Arthur E. Rodriguez, a ranger at the Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park and a former plumber, took a day off work to voluntarily help with the repair. Rodriguez hung suspended from a backhoe over the 80-foot-deep stope while he spliced a patch into the broken pipe.
Harper praised the job done by city workers, volunteers and gas and electric utility employees who assisted in surveying the site and repairing the pipe. Repairs to the broken pipe were completed Jan. 7 with no disruption of services to businesses in the historic district of Tombstone.
Certificates of appreciation were given to Rodriguez and Jose M. Ballesteros, an 11-year employee with the Tombstone Public Works Department. The city also lauded Public Works Director Gradillas, former Tombstone mayor.
"I didn't hear one negative comment the entire time," Harper said. "People like Art Rodriguez, Alex Gradillas, Jose Ballesteros and a number of others worked until the job was done. The awards and certificates I handed out are only a token against the value of their work in the crisis."
Recent inspections of the mine stope by Inspector Martin's office, Tombstone Development Co. and the Army Corps of Engineers showed there was no immediate danger to the historical buildings in the vicinity. Subsidence will continue to threaten the main sewer line running the length of Toughnut Street, the mayor stated in a press release.
The city is awaiting results of a Jan. 22 inspection to examine the options available to stabilize the sinking ground and fill the stope. Preliminary recommendations are to fill in the area around the broken pipe, lay a new sewer 20 to 30 feet southwest of the present line, and procure funding to stabilize the subsiding ground.
"There's no reason to fill in the entire mine," Harper said. "We just need to repair the area of the stope that affects Tombstone." Martin warned that simply back-filling the stope with tons of mine tailings could cause more collapses to occur into deeper chambers of the mine below the Million Dollar stope.
"That could leave us with one huge chasm," Martin said. Harper said filling and stabilizing the stope would require drilling shafts and placing reinforced concrete piers into the ground, sealing the stope permanently and filling it with mine tailings.
A similar project was completed in 1982 after the ground collapsed into another section of the Good Enough mine under the old Tombstone firehouse. Harper said the 1982 project on the old firehouse, two blocks east of the Rose Tree sinkhole, cost the city $46,000.
Media coverage of the January sinkhole crisis did not generate the same rumors of the town being swallowed up or mass evacuations that followed the July announcement of "imminent danger" carried on CNN.
Reger said the visitors center received about 20 telephone calls the first day after the hole opened, five calls the next day and "only one or two since then." "Most of the people who called weren't worried about the town collapsing. They asked if the water was safe," Reger said.
"I stepped into it this time," Harper said when asked about press coverage of the broken pipe. "Last July the mine inspector and the mine owners bypassed me with their announcements. This time I wanted everyone to know just what was happening here so they would understand the situation. The television stations seemed to be attempting to make amends for last time around."
Chip Kline, owner of a new Tombstone shop, laughed as he described the media activity over the broken sewer line.
"At least this time they didn't make it such a big deal because it really isn't," Kline said. "There are still a number of merchants that are still angry about last summer. They didn't appreciate those news reports one bit."
Harper said he is encouraged by visits from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., and state and county officials who have looked at the problem and voiced support for Tombstone's long-range sinkhole plans. Harper said he intends to contact some of the large mining operations in Arizona to seek assistance in completing the stabilization process after a final plan of action is approved.
"We won't know how large a financial expense is involved until the survey is completed," Harper said. "It's going to be a while before this problem is solved,"
Kolbe said that once the survey is completed and a plan is presented by the Corps of Engineers it would be possible to secure financial assistance for the project.
"There are state and federal funds available for these situations," Kolbe said. "I'm almost certain Tombstone won't have any trouble qualifying for aid."
Mona Goss, a Los Angeles Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, said her office has received the results of a Jan. 22 survey and is evaluating the information to see what can be done to stabilize the area permanently. The Corps will make recommendations for long-range stabilization plans to the city "in the near future," Goss said.
The Corps of Engineers was called in by state officials who asked for assistance with recommendations for stabilizing Toughnut Street after Tombstone's mayor declared the open hole and the sewage spilling into the mine shaft an emergency. Goss toured the mine with a group of state and city officials Jan. 22. She described the stope underlying Toughnut street as "deep, dirty and dangerous."
"The mine has more than one level and some of the rooms are huge, but there are shafts going in every direction," Goss said. "And it doesn't smell too good down there either."
The area underneath Tombstone is a maze of abandoned mine shafts dug hundreds of feet deep with interconnecting passageways to different levels. As recently as the early 1970s, TombstoneÍs sewage and run-off water were diverted into the inactive mines. City water wells have tested high in levels of E-coli bacteria causing the city to install a water purification system. Sewage no longer is dumped into the mine shafts.
Manuel "Manny" Valenzuela, Deputy State Mine Inspector with the Tucson office, said records exist for dozens of mines around the Tombstone area. Valenzuela charted the passageways leading into the Million Dollar stope and plotted them on a map of Toughnut Street.
The Hazardous Abandoned Mine Finders, a group of hikers, located 122 abandoned mines in the Dragoon Mountains near Tombstone. The group charts the location of mine shafts, posts a State Mine Inspector's notice of the hazard, and notifies the Forest Service of the location.
The hikers, all retirees in their 70s and 80s, spent one day each week during the summer searching for old mines. They marked 85 in a two-month period.
"We are very cautious," mine finders president Donald Blickwede said, "We never go into the mines."
The sinkhole has left Tombstone residents and business owners angry about lost business they blame on the summer's media reports. No one living in Tombstone believes the town will be swallowed and there are no plans to open the maze of mine shafts as a tourist attraction.
Toughnut Street remains blocked to traffic, a chain-link fence surrounding the gaping hole over the 80-foot drop into the mine.
Tourists, strolling the streets in search of the places where desperadoes and gunfighters made history, walk past the barricades without realizing what lies beyond the fence and below the ground beneath their feet.
The old silver mines that once created the legends of Tombstone have changed over the years from the source of the city's wealth to a potential threat to the tourist-based economy and the physical safety of the historic town.
This time, sinking ground caused more anger about media reports than danger or damage to the town. The blocked street is a nuisance to residents and tourists, but that problem eventually will be resolved after a workable plan is accepted and funding for the project is secured.
"No one knows for certain how many mine shafts there are down there," Valenzuela said. "Sometimes we find them because the ground starts to sink." Arnold Wilson, a retiree from Akron, Ohio, visited Tombstone last month and went to see the infamous sinkhole.
"That's the thing I heard about on the news - "It donÍt look like much to me," he said.
1998UA Department of Journalism
jourdept@u.arizona.edu |
