On My Blindness (Part 1)

I am reading Stephen Kuusisto's memoir Planet of the Blind, primarily because I read an excerpt of it in Dog is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship. The excerpt told the story of Kuusisto and his guide dog, Corky. I was moved by this part of the book and so I'm reading the whole thing.

I had the book at rehearsal yesterday. Patrick Torelle saw it and asked me I had ever done one of those exercises where you replicated blindness by wearing a blindfold.

I said that I hadn't, but that I had been blind for five days.

He was curious about my experience. I decided to write about it.

I temporarily lost my sight on July 23, 1973 in a Zinc Plant accident at the Bunker Hill Company near Kellogg. I was working in a roaster on an overhaul.
In the manufacturing of zinc, the roaster is where the zinc concentrate is heated (roasted) at extremely high temperatures to separate the zinc from the sulfide and other non-zinc material. As you can see in the accompanying figure, sulfur dioxide and dust are a bi-product of roasting zinc ore. At the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant, there were five roasters, four of them in the area I was working. The roaster Stan and I were in for this overhaul was shut down, but the other three were operating.

The flue in "our" roaster was closed. This kept the sulfur dioxide gas and dust generated in the other roasters from coming in "our" roaster.

An operator saw that our flue was closed and forgot the roaster was shut down. He opened the flue. Gas and dust poured in on Stan and me.

We were at the top of the inside of the roaster on a scaffold. Our only exit was down a long extension ladder, to a ledge that circled the roaster's interior, to a small door just big enough for a person to crawl in and out of.

Stan started down the ladder. I waited for him to get down a ways. I started down the ladder. The ladder had come back on me when I went up it earlier. I was very cautious going down. The dust and gas blackened the roaster. When I got to the ledge, I couldn't see. I was disoriented.

I fell. I fell to the bottom of the roaster, about 6-8 feet, into dust. I stood up, hacking. I tried to call for help. The gas muted me.

I decided to die. I lay down, formed a pillow by putting my hands together in the shape of a prayer, lay my cheek on my hands, and closed my eyes. I passed out. I envisioned the story of my death on the front page of the Kellogg Evening News. (The audacity.)

Deciding to die saved my life. I had gotten underneath the gas. Outside the roaster, Stan had gone for help. Someone closed the offending flue. The gas was rising.

The roaster was too toxic for a rescuer. I was on my own. I stood up and began to feel my way around the inside of roaster's circumference. I'd never been in the bottom of a roaster before. Few had.

My sight was deteriorating. I would learn later that the sulfur dioxide combined with my tears to form sulfuric acid. It was like having acid rain in my eyes. They were burning.

But, I could see light above me. Workers who couldn't come to me were shining flashlights through the exit. Feeling around, I discovered a permanent ladder welded into the roaster. It went straight to the exit.

I was already weakened by having inhaled sulfur dioxide and zinc and cadmium dust. I pulled myself up the ladder. The guys pulled me out the exit. Oxygen was there. My dad was there. So was an ambulance. Dad and I sped to the hospital.

(Stay tuned.)

(If anyone reading this can explain the function of a roaster better than I have, please tell me so in a comment...and, if you don't mind, leave an address where I can email you. Thank you.)