This book reconstructs what happened without dramatization, speculation, or moral judgment. Drawing from inspection reports, historical records, and the physical realities of coal mining along Colorado’s Front Range, An Acceptable Number examines how reasonable decisions, made under known constraints, converged on irreversible loss.

The mine was inspected. The risks were understood. Limits were imposed. Work continued.

When failure came, it did not arrive as chaos, negligence, or villainy. It arrived as physics.

This is not a story about heroism or blame. It is a structural account of proximity, fire, water, pressure, and time—of how systems designed to function safely within margins can still exhaust those margins without warning.

Told in a restrained, archival voice, An Acceptable Number resists emotional instruction. It does not ask the reader to feel a certain way. It asks only that the sequence be understood.

The book begins and ends at the memorial plaque that marks the site today, where the names remain fixed and the ground has long since been reused.

The acceptable number was ten.
It remains ten.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

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We first started out as ?The Paperback Exchange,? a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become ?PBShop.? This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.

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We ask all customers to contact us for authorisation should they wish to return their order. Orders returned without authorisation may not be credited.
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