{"id":122973,"date":"2013-11-19T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/foreman-from-durango-died-while-trying-to-save-miner\/"},"modified":"2013-11-19T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T05:30:00","slug":"foreman-from-durango-died-while-trying-to-save-miner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/foreman-from-durango-died-while-trying-to-save-miner\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreman from Durango died while trying to save miner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rick
Rick Williams and one of his grandchildren.<\/span>The Denver Post<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sunday morning, Nicholas Cappanno, 33, went into a section of the Revenue-Virginius mine in Ouray County where an explosive had recently been detonated. When he didn\u2019t come out, his shift foreman, Rick Williams, 59, went to find him.<\/p>\n

They both died, overcome by lethal carbon monoxide the blast left behind.<\/p>\n

Cappanno, who had been on the job for only about two weeks, \u201cwas my little brother,\u201d said Eric Keep, 36, \u201che was probably one of the funniest guys. The other guy (Williams) was his boss and he died trying to save him. He is a hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams \u201cknew how to make the right decision and he put others before himself,\u201d said his son, Nathan Williams, 25.<\/p>\n

Miners who were working in the area found the bodies and detected the deadly levels of CO2 before evacuating, said Amy Louviere, spokeswoman for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Twenty miners were taken to hospitals after the accident, and all have since been released.<\/p>\n

The MSHA has required the mine operator to submit a plan to assure the mine is properly ventilated and all harmful gases have been removed so the investigation can begin, Louviere said.<\/p>\n

The mine produced silver from 1876 until the 1940s. Denver-based Star Mine LLC resumed operations this year.<\/p>\n

Williams, a Durango resident and father of two grown children, was among the first to take a job there when the mine reopened, Nathan Williams said.<\/p>\n

He had mined gold, silver, \u201call sorts of things,\u201d when he was younger, then left mining to become a contractor, building and remodeling homes, his son said. The poor economy led him back to mining.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the market crash, he wouldn\u2019t have had to get into it,\u201d Nathan Williams said.<\/p>\n

An U.S. Air Force veteran who worked in helicopter repair, Williams was raised, and spent most of his life in and around the San Juan Mountains, where mining is a way of life for many.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was tough, he took care of business, he wasn\u2019t afraid to do the right thing, even if other people wouldn\u2019t,\u201d his son said.<\/p>\n

Cappanno, too, was good with his hands, and had remodeled several homes, said his sister-in-law, Katie Caufield, 36.<\/p>\n

He had worked in oil fields in Colorado and Wyoming, and was employed by a subcontractor in Rifle before going to work at the mine about two weeks before the accident, Keep said.<\/p>\n

Working in the oil fields kept him away from his family for weeks at a time, and he wanted to be home with his wife, Martha, where he could tuck his children into bed at night.<\/p>\n

He had grown up around miners \u2013 cousins and uncles labored below ground, Keep said. \u201cMom and dad and myself didn\u2019t really feel comfortable with him going down there, but he is a grown man.\u201d<\/p>\n

A job in the mine also gave him an opportunity to work on something he was passionate about \u2013 brewing beer. He wanted to start a company that would malt grain for use by craft brewers, and he was pursuing his dream, Caufield said.<\/p>\n

Mining \u201chim the means to be with his family as much as possible and it gave him the opportunity to pursue his malting dream,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Williams and one of his grandchildren.The Denver Post On Sunday morning, Nicholas Cappanno, 33, went into a section of the Revenue-Virginius mine in Ouray County where an explosive had recently been detonated. When he didn\u2019t come out, his shift foreman, Rick Williams, 59, went to find him. They both died, overcome by lethal carbon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[701,1152,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-disasters-and-crashes","tag-emergency-incident","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122973"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}