Snow Slide — British Columbia Chronicles

“May Day, May Day, May Day—!”

The distress call pierced the grey stillness of Feb. 18, 1965. Then the voice was cut off, and static reigned the airwaves.

But the frantic plea had been heard and, as cold and weary miners, existing on chocolate bars, clawed at a mountain with shovels and bare hands in search of buried comrades, one of the largest rescue operations in B.C. history was begun.

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Straddling the edge of massive Laduc Glacier, 35 kilometres (22 miles) north of Stewart, B.C., and connected to the outside world via Hyder, Alaska, what would become the mining camp of Granduc had its beginnings as early as 1931. It entered the history books with a bang 60 years ago when millions of tons of tumbling snows entombed 40 men and smashed buildings and equipment.

Thirty-two-year-old Vancouver miner Jack Smylie arose earlier than usual that fateful morning. He wanted an early breakfast, he telephoned his wife after, and he was midway between the cook shack and the bunkhouse when the mountain charged down. The avalanche descended upon the camp in two forks, one rolling over the bunkhouse he’d left moments before, the other smashing the cookhouse—but leaving Smylie, untouched, on an island between!

Had he started for breakfast a minute earlier or later, he'd have been killed.

Unno Nyrhnnon, 40, also was in the open when caught by the slide. The tidal wave of snow had swept him along 200 feet before burying him seven feet under. “Somehow, he was still able to breathe,” said his wife. “He dug with his hands until he was partly uncovered and was able to call for help. Other workers pulled him out.”

Another miner caught outside. Clarence Moore, of Dauphin, Manitoba, was headed for the tool shed when “everything just went black”. When he came to, he was buried, only a small pocket of air warmed by his arched body keeping him alive. “It was pretty cold in there, but I stayed calm. I knew they would be looking for me. It was awfully dark.”

Yet another survivor saw thick steel girders “bend like they were made of paper,” when the avalanche smashed the machine shop where he was working.

One man was saved by a piece of drifting plywood. George Kaduk said he was “shovelling snow by hand outside the tunnel. I had dug quite a hole and when I saw the slide coming I dived into the hole. A big piece of plywood from a building fell over the hole. It trapped me there but saved my life.”

Men trampled over him for six hours before finding him.

It’s hard to believe that the Granduc Mine was established in terrain like this. Its very isolation and the extremes of winter weather made rescue efforts all the more challenging. —*BC Archives*

First word of the disaster to reach the outside world came from Pacific Western Airline radio man Innis Kelly. Broadcasting from the mine office, one of the two remaining structures, he reported, “We can hold out for tonight.”

His initial distress call had been cut short when the power house collapsed. Almost all buildings had been “levelled—just like a field!” Then Kelly transmitted on batteries salvaged from bulldozers stranded in 12 feet of snow. Outside, in a torrential downpour which increased danger of further avalanches, a giant signal fire flickered as, all about him, injured men lay on the shack floor and a doctor and first-aid attendant work desperately.

While Lt.-Col. W.H.B. Matthew formulated evacuation plans in Prince George, 200 miles to the south, the first survivors were being dug from the snows. Desperate for tools, miners use pieces of chain—one man on each end—to saw through the packed snow. Twenty men, some in critical condition, were dragged to safety.

Twenty more were missing.

The Alaskan ferry Taku sped from Ketchikan to Prince Rupert to load medical supplies and rescue personnel before proceeding to the Chickamin River to serve as a floating hospital for the injured mrn airlifted from Granduc by helicopter.

The Alaskan ferry *Taku* was pressed into service as a hospital ship. —*BC Archives*

At beleaguered Granduc, where snow had fallen for three days, the immediate problems were those of food, clothing and shelter because, for the time being there could be no outside help. Until rescuers could break through, they were on their own.

Meanwhile, army engineers were rushing to Stewart from Vancouver Island and southern Mainland ports. By the following day, the number of missing had been raised to 25, two bodies having been recovered.

Once an initial squad of the international armada of rescue workers reached the scene, the battle against time, a raging blizzard and 18 feet of snow was on. At Chickamin River, 60 more rescuers were stranded by the weather. but 113 survivors had been ferried by air and sea to hospital in Ketchikan, the ferry Taku working around the clock and covering 500 miles in two days as hospital ship.

However, her evacuees numbered only seven. Among them was a 21-year-old miner who fell to the deck in shock and, as three men struggled to hold them, his fevered mind relived the nightmare of being trapped beneath the snow, and he pushed wildly to get free, to breathe, to see light...

By this time the US Coast Guard had taken charge of rescue operations.

Substantial buildings like these were crushed and splintered by the incredible force of the snow slide. —*BC Archives*

The tales of miraculous escape told by survivors made hardy rescuers wince. Two brothers said they were had worried their way out of a collapsed mine shaft, haunted by the muted groans of their unlucky companions who were slowly suffocating. One man chopped free of the icy tomb with a meat cleaver. A fourth had been saved by an air pocket formed when the slide knocked a door on top of him.

Throughout the province, families and friends continued to anxiously await news of loved ones.

As another blizzard ravaged the camp, 25 numbed, exhausted searchers hunted for survivors beneath the rumbling mountains of white. Five more bodies were recovered but the weather prevented further men, equipment and supplies from being landed as, at Ketchikan and Stewart, Americans and Canadians waited anxiously for the storm to abate so that they could take off for the disaster scene.

Many were now giving up hope a finding alive the 25 men still missing. But, said an RCMP sergeant, “there was always a chance for a miracle”.

An RCAF hangar in Vancouver saw the heart-rending scenes of survivors as they were reunited with families flown by chartered aircraft from Alaska, and “tough hard-rock miners and construction men from the northern wilderness spilled unashamed tears”. For some there was no joy; while elated husbands and wives embraced, one woman huddled alone in a corner, weeping softly.

Radio operator Kelly described the killing slide: "It was noiseless, not a sound. It was like watching a huge white wave with bulldozers and cats and men rolling on top of the crest. When it was over the men were just gone. Just gone, that's all.”

Kelly had been on his makeshift radio for 16 hours, unable to receive, not even sure that his frantic distress signals were being picked up. Between calls, he helped look for missing friends.

“The night shift,” he recounted, “35 men, were sleeping. They were buried alive. We got some of them out... They were crying and beating their heads against the timbers trying to get free when we found them.”

Alex Knot, 21, told how he’d been clearing snow from the bunkhouse roof when the slide occurred. "I turned around and saw the cookhouse coming right at me. I yelled, ‘Look out, a slide!’ then it hit me and I was buried. It felt like I was being hit by wet blankets—boom, boom. I was buried. Then I felt a foot in my face. I pushed up.”

It was his friend Bill Rogers who “grabbed my arms and was pulling while he stood on my ribs”.

The horrors of avalanche had followed but a few hours after a similar slide buried the 26 inhabitants of a tiny village, Cabrera, in Chile. For the poor South Americans, there would be no rescue, it being reported that not a sign of life was to be found within the three-mile sea of Ice, mud and rock which had swept over the village. Also, on the other side of the Pacific, more than 40 Japanese miners were trapped when an explosion shattered the coal pit in which they were working.

At Granduc, a small army of soldiers and bulldozers struggled grimly on. Roger Schmidt, who would be in the first rescuer to reach the scene, described the difficult conditions encountered: “The amount of debris in there is beyond description. There are 40-foot lengths of pipe conduit, torn up by the slide, [and] lying in 200-foot-long strips.

“When I first arrived there I was working in powder snow up to my knees even with my snowshoes on. The dog was buried up to his neck... You'd see boots sticking out of the snow—you had to check to see whether there was a leg in it. You'd find a glove and have to check for fingers.

“The place was just one general mess—like a bomb pit.”

The list of known dead had risen to 16. Ten men remained unaccounted for. But the rescuers had been inspired by the discovery of a carpenter—alive after being having been entombed for 77 hours! Einar Myllya, 38, was uncovered by the blade of a bulldozer which was clearing a helicopter landing pad. He was suffering from severe frostbite—but he was alive.

Despite an improvement in the weather, which was now mild, the threat of new slides continued. Thousands of miles distance, in Japan, hope was abandoned for the 33 miners still trapped at Yubari and, at Coleman Alberta, rescue workers ripped through a wall of coal in search of a 26-year-old miner buried for a week.

Then, on February 24, all rescue personal were hurriedly evacuated from still-dangerous Granduc. It was snowing heavily again and precipitating small slides, more of which were expected imminently.

Yet another case of avalanche sparked a search at the mining community of Bralorne, 500 miles to the south, where eight-year-old Leo Smythe had vanished while en route to a Cub Scout meeting, and it was feared that he'd been buried by snow sliding from buildings.

A photo of the Granduc glacier in 1980; other than the road, it looks to be barren of human activity. —*BC Archives*

A week after the mountain thundered down upon Granduc, hope was abandoned for the seven men still missing as, in Ketchikan, doctors fought to save the frozen limbs of carpenter Myllya who lay in a special oxygen pressure tank which would help to rebuild damage tissues and restore body function. Later, his fingertips had to be amputated but, other than this, he fully recovered from his terrifying ordeal.

Among the last to be injured had been the RCMP dog Prince who suffered a slashed foot from metal debris while hunting for bodies.

Finally, in Vancouver, 175 persons attended memorial services for the 26 men who’d died at Granduc. Later, rescue leader Lt.-Col. Matthews, veteran of the Port Alberni tidal wave disaster the previous year, recalled the week of frustration he'd experienced at Granduc: Firstly, snow and fog had prevented helicopters from landing at the site during the first, crucial 24 hours, and crippled flying operations sporadically thereafter.

Secondly, vital radio communications had suffered frequent interference and complete blackouts. Then the ferry Taku, instead of taking the direct 110-mile route to Chickamin River, went 180 miles out of the way, costing more precious time.

But the worst blow had been the fact that two-thirds of the rescue army had been stranded in Stewart during the hours immediately after the slide when they’d been most needed.

Twenty-six men died at Granduc, Feb. 18, 1965 in the worst provincial mining disaster in 35 years. It had been a bad winter for slides: four persons died the previous January, when 15,000,000 cubic yards of rock and mud obliterated a two-mile-long stretch of trans-provincial Highway near Hope. Seven more were buried at Ocean Falls four days later.

In April, 2025, the town of Stewart paid homage over two days to “one of the darkest moments in [its] history and a reminder of the tremendous risk that comes with working in the rugged and remote conditions,” as Mayor Angela Danuser explained it to the CBC.

The Granduc Mine finally shut down in the early 1980s. Of the 143 men working there at the time of the disaster, 68 had been caught in the open, the rest being indoors and 21 working underground. Granduc was the victim of a perfect storm of adverse weather conditions, geographic isolation and terrain.

The snow slide that killed 26 men in 1965 is recorded as one of B.C.’s deadliest in history, second only to the slide that buried 56 railway workers in Rogers Pass in 1910.