A fire boss is a person employed at a

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

or state certified official, responsible for examining a mine for dangers, particularly

explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...

, poisonous or suffocating gases. Usually the fire boss is the first person to enter a

, to verify its safety, before a shift crew enters. It may also loosely refer to a foreman or shift manager for the

miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting ...

Origins

In the early days of mining the fire boss would wear thick clothing, usually soaked in water, and walk through the mine with a lit

candle A candle is an ignitable wick embedded in wax, or another flammable solid substance such as tallow, that provides light, and in some cases, a fragrance. A candle can also provide heat or a method of keeping time. A person who makes candl ...

affixed to a long stick. If there were pockets of explosive gases the candle would ignite them, often not sparing the boss on the other end. Less dangerous methods are used today such as pumping air into the mine to dilute the levels of dangerous gases (see

explosive limit Mixtures of dispersed combustible materials (such as gaseous or vaporised fuels, and some dusts) and oxygen in the air will burn only if the fuel concentration lies within well-defined lower and upper bounds determined experimentally, referred to a ...

External links

US Department of Labor site - "Mine safety"
Mine safety {{job-stub de:Wettermann_(Bergbau)