The Copper Mine
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The mestizo operating the
The lights illuminating his work area were bright, and the moonshine was almost as bright, and he could see the pickup truck coming with his replacement. There would be time for one more bucket of the sandy tailings. He rotated the cab with its beak like scoop and gouged another load, rotated back and dumped it on the top of the dam. And of all the millions, this one miniscule bucket full was all it took.
Deep at the core of the dam, where the first tailings had been deposited, and where several under drains were plugged, the hydraulic pressure between the finely ground grains of tailings finally and infinitesimally exceeded the forces of frictional cohesion between them.
Now, it was fluid. The slip plane quickly extended along a curving line from the core of the dam two thirds of the way back under the tailings, and at the same time along half the length of the dam at its base. The forces were intolerable. The laws of nature required its release.
It was as if the earth was tired of the abuse heaped upon it, the indignities conducted on its surface, the scarring of its core, and like a cancer that needed to be excised from it, the tailings had to go, and the earth was as indifferent to where they went as is the cancer to whom it strikes.
The backhoe operator pushed on the levers and rotated the cab back toward the mine, put it into idle and reached into his breast pocket for his package of cigarettes. Pulling one out, he relaxed, looking onto the flood lit surface of the tailings dam and at the mine buildings beyond, so strangely clean in the moonlight.
Searching his pants pocket for his lighter he blinked, shook his head and blinked again. The mine buildings seemed to be moving, and then he thought he was, too. He looked out the side of the cab, confused, just in time to see the poles with the floodlights on them tilting. The last things he saw were the brilliant electrical explosions when the floodlights smashed. Then his cab was rolling over and over and the glass was breaking in and he did not even have time to be frightened before he was smothered.
Initially, it ruptured in slow motion at the point of failure in the center where the stream used to be. This lasted only for a few moments, then the dam exploded in each direction, and in a matter of seconds it was gone for half of its length and millions of tons of tailings poured through the gaping hole, accelerating down the valley.
It reached the village at peak velocity and the small ridge curving into the valley diverted the torrent for a second or two until pressure behind carried the tailings into the air like a skier taking the top of a mogul.
No one heard it come, no dogs barked, no one cried out, and seconds later there was no sign of the village at all, save for the cross protruding obliquely from the tailings a long way from where it had been on top of the church.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
In a remote Chilean valley in 1997, an Indian village vanishes. Not at the hands of the military, as could have happened and did happen to others, but beneath millions of tons of tailings from a copper mine perched on the plateau above. Except for those whose caring does not matter, no one else knows of this, and the Chilean military and the American company that invested in the Canadian copper mine are determined to keep it that way.
But two people do know and, despite their differences, they are soon thrown together as they race across the harsh and beautiful landscape of
Hugh Nichols, jaded by his work as an environmental executive in the mining industry, reconciles his troubled recollections of another village - one that he sacrificed - as he falls back on long forgotton skills acquired as a Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant in Viet Nam. Serena Teresa D'Annuncio, the Chilean-American cultural anthropologist studying the village below the mine, heals wounds from her own past as they flee together through the rugged valleys of the Andes and the barrios of Santiago.
Adventure and romance, corporate intrigue and death, come together in a thrilling and all too real account of mining and fascism in The Copper Mine.
About the Author
Bruce Corneille Switzer bases his corporate thriller, The Copper Mine, on more than 20 years of professional experience in the mining industry, and his visits to Chile during the late 1990's as the environmental director of an international mining company.