LOS ANGELES (AFP) – One person died and 23 others were rescued after an elevator malfunctioned during a tour of a disused Colorado gold mine on Thursday, which had left a dozen people stuck underground for several hours.
The incident occurred during the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine Tour, which takes visitors 1,000 feet (300 metres) underground in the western US state.
A group of 11 people, including two children, were in the elevator when the failure occurred, Teller County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday. One person died as a result of the malfunction, and four received minor injuries.
First responders at the scene “determined that a malfunction occurred with the elevator that brings visitors into and out of the mine”, the statement said, without explaining the cause of the problem.
“We did have one fatality that occurred during this issue at 500 feet,” county sheriff Jason Mikesell told a news conference earlier.
The 11 people were brought to the surface by the same elevator that had malfunctioned, according to the sheriff’s office.
An additional 12 people, who had been stranded in a tunnel at the bottom of the mine, were “safely rescued”, Governor Jared Polis said in a post on X late Thursday.
The tour group and a mine employee had been stuck underground for about six hours, Mikesell told reporters after the rescue.
After engineers and local authorities confirmed it was safely functioning, the 12 stuck in the tunnel were brought up in the elevator four at a time, he added.
Emergency officials with ropes had been standing by in case they were required.
Chairs, blankets and water have been provided to those in the mine. “The atmospherics are good inside the tunnel,” Mikesell said earlier.
Those still inside the mine had not been informed of the fatality. “We’re just trying to keep down the worry of what’s going on, so that nobody gets excited,” Mikesell said.
The mine outside the small city of Cripple Creek, around 100 miles south of Denver, offers a chance to “Experience the ‘Old West’ as it was for hard rock gold miners of ‘The World’s Greatest Gold Camp’,” according to its website.
The Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine Tour would be “closed until further notice,” a message on the website said Thursday, calling the recent incident “tragic”.
