15 - A hatred of mines sprouts life-saving technology

Italo-Canadian engineer Richard Lovat invents ground-breaking tunneling machine

The man coughed painfully one last time, then he laid down his head and died. He was 42. The curse of the mines, called silicosis by physicians, had felled another one.
In spite of being only three at the time, his son Richard understood perfectly that his father would never again play with him. "It was then," Richard Lovat remembers today, "that my hate for mines began. That hate led me to invent a machine that could make underground work safe. That machine has been in existence for the past 40 years, and if you want to be romantic you may say it was an act of love for my father and for all those who lost their lives in mines and tunnels. In any case, it's a proof that one can make business without risking someone else's life."
Richard Lovat is now 71, and chairs Lovat Inc., a company specialized in underground tunneling for subways, aqueducts, roads, mines and anything else man wants to dig up or through the Earth's crust.
Lovat's machine is familiarly called "the mole." It's a huge cylinder, ranging in diameter from two to 20 metres, boring tunnels in the ground and operated by a crew of three, maximum. A sort of submarine, travelling underground instead of underwater. At the same time as the mole digs, a conveyor belt carries debris away and a concrete lining is sprayed on the just-bored gallery. "This way we can dig up to 500 metres per week, i.e. 100 metres per day," explains Richard Lovat.
And how many metres per day can be dug in a traditional system, by men with pickaxes and jackhammers?
"No more than 10 metres. Just to give you an idea, I'll tell you that digging the same amount of soil and rock we daily do with three men, would require no less than 300 miners. But besides this, what about the safety our mole guarantees? In almost 40 years we had no fatalities. So, safety and low management cost, including insurance premiums."
It's no surprise, then, that Richard Lovat's invention should find its place in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records.
This is another success story involving an Italian-Canadian. The difference with other such stories is that this was not borne of a stroke of genius, but rather came after years of study devoted to underground safety, and a deep hatred of mines.
Richard Lovat says: "I graduated at a vocational school for electromechanical technicians in Belluno, where I was born. After completing my diploma I worked in Switzerland for a period. But after a while I fled: that was no life."
What do you mean?
"We Italians were always precarious. Even when we did egregious things, they considered us merely immigrants. And then, every three months we all had to renew our work permit. I was making good money there, up to three times as much as a Swiss, but in the end I remained a gastarbeiter, a foreign worker allowed to do nothing more than what his foreman told him to. So, upon hearing that in Canada there was a place for whoever was not afraid of working, I packed up and left. That was in 1951."
What did you do on your arrival?
"I stayed in Toronto for a little while, then I went to Windsor and worked in a mechanical workshop. When I learned that there was a Montreal firm looking for specialists, I left Windsor and moved to Quebec, also because I could speak French well. I lived there for six months, and I came to know Lucille, who would become my wife. She gave me three children: Diana, Ricky - who's now working with me - and Sonia. And I'm the grandfather of four. Right before marrying her, I was told that in Toronto the Sam Cosentino company, a big construction company, needed a machinery maintenance manager. So I returned to Toronto and worked for many years with Cosentino, eventually becoming one of its partners for some jobs. There I began to work on my project of a low-cost, high-safety, high-speed tunneling machine. When, later on, I created Lovat Inc., I brought these ideas with me. The matter was becoming urgent..."
Why?
"Those were the years when Canada was rapidly industrializing: on the one hand it had to exploit its underground resources, the mines, on the other it had to guarantee fast transportation and enormous city-building. That meant subway lines, water supply and sewage, all of them underground. Italians, who were flocking in at the time, found jobs in those grandiose public works, where many of them lost their lives because safety systems were fit for the previous century. Some days ago I read in Corriere Canadese of the ceremony in memory of our five fellow countrymen who died 40 years ago in the cave-in of the Hogg's Hollow tunnel. I can remember that event perfectly, and I recall my helpless anger at the time. People were then being sent underground with little concern, at best there was the dangerous safety measure of compressed air;"
What do you mean by "a dangerous safety measure"?
"Let me explain. When a tunnel was to be dug, especially if the ground was made up of friable soil or clay, sealed compartments were set up and filled with compressed air. The compartments were closed with airtight doors. Compressed air, exerting pressure on the tunnel walls, prevented their caving in."
Was it a safe expedient?
"Far from it. And it implied huge costs, because workers, before entering and after exiting those compartments, had to stay for at least two hours in a kind of hyberbaric chamber, similar to those used by SCUBA divers reaching great depths. This in turn meant that great numbers of miners had to be available, because productivity was severely curtailed, effectively halved, by this stay in the chamber."
Did the 'mole' solve these problems?
"Yes, it did, even though I was considered a fool at first, starting from trade unions, which thought that my machine would have cut jobs. I replied: maybe, but those who would work would not risk their lives. Time vindicated me."
And in all these years, how many 'moles' did you build?
"Two hundred."
How much does one cost?
"From two or three to 20 million dollars. According to size."
What is Lovat Inc. today?
"Until some years ago it was at the same time a machinery manufacturer and construction firm, that is to say it both built and put machines at work. Nowadays it's just building and selling 'moles.' It has its main office and assembly lines in Toronto, a staff of 300, and three local sales and service offices: in London, England, for Europe, in Singapore for Asia, and in Sydney for Australia. In 40 years it sold machines or directly operated them all over the industrialized world."
What was the job that gave you the greatest satisfaction?
"All of them, because every one implied creating great works without risking human lives. But if you want to know which jobs brought the most prestigious recognition, I'll tell you that when the London aqueduct, 87 kilometres dug by my machines, was opened, Queen Elizabeth shook my hand. And King Juan Carlos did the same when the Madrid Subway was completed."
What happens when the 'mole' hits a water-bearing stratum?
"Nothing at all. Its walls can bear enormous pressure. The machine keeps digging and blocks any leak by spraying tons of concrete on the tunnel walls. We had just such a problem when digging the tunnel from Sarnia to Fort Huron, because we had to pass below the St. Clair river. Everything went OK, and the Governor of Michigan thanked me publicly."
Can the 'mole' dig horizontally only, or can it move in all directions?
"Any direction, any depth. In Nova Scotia we're working in a coal mine, 1,000 metres below the ground."
Are you the only manufacturer of 'moles,' or are there other companies doing the same?
"Man has always been thinking about underground safety, and I would be a liar if I said that I was the only one to solve that problem. Today, British and Japanese are also building nice machines. I can claim to be a pioneer, or among the pioneers, of this system."
In your youth you decided you would defeat the mines and you did it. Are you satisfied, or is there something else you would have liked to do?
"No, I feel satisfied, not just because I helped make underground work safer, but also because I made family life more certain."
'Family' life?
"You see, my family had three generations of miners: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. The anguish that any wife of a miner feels when he goes out to work was commonplace in our home. I remember my mother telling me: 'If you don't want your wife to become a widow within three months, find any job but this.' It happened, at the time. The 'mole' solved these problems, and if you think that its operators sit comfortably in an air-conditioned cabin, breathing clean air instead of deadly dust, you'll see the steps forward we have made."
I suppose you received many awards for your work.
"Certainly. I was awarded the Order of Canada, made a member of the Canadian Mining Institute, and given all sorts of honours from the countries where we have worked. My machines dug subway tunnels in 20 cities all over the world, and right now are working in hundreds of construction sites from the Americas to Europe, Russia, the Far East, Asia. I'm lecturing mining engineers at the University of Toronto and the Polytechnic of Turin. Yes, I've received many awards."
And also from the Italian government, I suppose.
"No, your supposition is wrong. Maybe the Italian government is unaware of my existence, even if my 'moles' worked in the most difficult terrain we found, under the Apennines, or zig-zagged among archaeological treasures wherever I dug subways or aqueducts. Perhaps the ancients were right: nobody is a prophet in his own land. I take little notice of this forgetfulness. I was interested in my personal war on mines, fought since I was 3. And today, at 71, I can proudly claim victory."

(translated by Emanuele Oriano)

Publication Date: 2002-12-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2190