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17 mine employes were rescued from an elevator stuck 900 feet under ground last week after about ten hours in freezing temperatures.  The Lansing Fire Department acted in accord with Cargill and other local fire departments to come up with a plan and implement it as quickly and safely as possible.  Now that the mine workers are safe, company officials say they will take all the time they need to find out what caused the problem and to implement a remedy before reopening the mine.  The mild winter certainly took pressure off the company in terms of providing road salt to their customers, but Cargill representatives say they would conduct a thorough investigation in any case.

"The first reports were, '17 People trapped in Mine'," says Cargill Spokesman Mark Klein.  "That conjures up an image that is not very good.  '17 People Stuck On An Elevator' still isn't a good thing.  I think back at the times I've been on an elevator and stuck for a couple of minutes.  It is more about I've got to get to where I need to go.  10 hours is unacceptable.  But then I think everybody had loaded up their vans and were on their way.  Everybody had mobilized and then we got everybody out."

So what really happened?  How will it impact the mine and employees?  And how soon will the mine reopen?

What Happened?




The elevator is guided by a steel rail so it remains free to ascend and descend in the shaft.  Company officials think that rail may have bent or was damaged, causing the elevator to become stuck.  A week later they are still examining and repairing the mechanism.

At least one news outlet reported that the elevator failed a week before the 17 miners were stuck.  Klein says that incident was not an elevator malfunction at all -- it was a power outage.  The elevator wasn't the only thing that wasn't working when the power went out.  The good news was that incident occurred on a Saturday when nobody was down in the mine.  He notes that the two incidents were unrelated, and the first could not have impacted the second one.

"On January 2nd the electricity was tripped at the mine," Klein explains.  "Any time we think the elevator, which runs on electricity, is going to be down for more than 30 minutes, we notify MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration).  That results in it being noted in their records.  That's just the way the process is.  There wasn't a failure of the elevator.  Our electricity got tripped.  That clearly was related to electricity, where this was a structural issue."

It seems simple.  An elevator with 17 passengers gets stuck in a shaft.  Get them out.  Fix the elevator.  Get back to business.  But when the elevator is 900 feet down a 2,300 foot shaft and the temperature is zero degrees, the solution becomes a bit more complex.  First you need to make sure the people are safe.  You have to insure the elevator is secure, and won't fall the remaining 1,400 feet.  You have to provide for the employees' comfort as best you can.  You have to find a way to get them out from a height equivalent to a 90 story building, just under 3/4 the height of the Empire State Building.

"You can train and do everything you want in life, but how do you train for something like this?," says mine support employee Fran Bell.  "This was instinct and common sense and everyone putting their minds together and getting things done.  This is something that doesn't happen every day, and I hope it never happens again."


What did happen was that mine officials deployed their own people and called 911.  First Assistant Chief Dennis Griffin was the Incident Commander on call.  He received the call around 11pm Wednesday night, and went to the scene to set up a command center and call for additional help.  Mine officials had found a way to lower blankets down the shaft while the miners huddled together and told jokes and stories to keep their spirits up.

Mine workers typically bring meals to work, because you can't exactly take a break for a lunch hour at McDonald's when it takes about 50 minutes to get from your workplace to the surface.  They also have safety equipment, including the stereotypical helmets with lights mounted on them.  So light and food were not the issue.  The biggest issues were the temperature -- it was only 10 degrees, and close to zero in the shaft -- and the miners' state of mind.

Griffin and Mine Manager Shawn Wilczynski coordinated to accomplish a multitude of tasks.  First and foremost they needed to locate a crane and a rescue basket with a 1,000 foot capacity to get the miners out.  Keep in mind, it was the middle of the night, so the crane companies weren't open.  They got lucky when they located Auburn Crane & Rigging, Auburn, NY.  Not only did the company have a crane with a 1,000 foot cable, but they had a rescue basket and a skilled operator.  The crane was given a police escort by the Cayuga County Sheriff's department to make sure it arrived on the scene as soon as feasible.

Lansing Supervisor Ed LaVigne and Councilwomen Katrina Binkewicz and Andra Benson were out of town for mandatory training for newly elected officials.  Griffin called LaVigne at 2:30 am to apprise him of the situation.  He coordingated with remaining board members in case anything was needed from the Town (it turned out it wasn't).

"The two board members I was with were willing to go home that morning and cut their training short, but I didn't think that was necessary as long as the situation was monitored," LaVigne says.  "If they needed something from the Town I was a phone call away."

Food was provided for employees and emergency responders on the surface, who stayed on site for the more than ten hours the rescue took.  Around 1:30 Tompkins County Public Information Officer Marcia Lynch was called to the scene.  She set up a location for the press at Lansing Central Fire Station, and sent press releases to about 100 local news outlets throughout the day Thursday.  She also took calls and requests from national news outlets including ABC, NBC, Fox News, CBS Radio, CNN, and the Associated Press.

At the same time Griffin reached a contact who was able to offer All Saints Catholic Church for Red Cross volunteers to set up a center for the families of the 17 mine workers.  More than 15 agencies responded to the emergency.  Cargill officials, Lynch and Griffin's team wanted a place away from the mine, and especially away from the press where families could feel safe and receive information as events progressed.

Not widely reported was the fact that that there were still some employees from the second shift in the mine when the incident occurred.  The Cayuga Salt Mine actually has three shafts.  The one that became stuck is generally used to transport personnel and equipment.  Elevators in a second shaft bring the finished salt product to the surface, where is is stored and loaded onto trucks to transport it to customers.  The third shaft is out of commission, but could be used if needed.  So there was no problem getting the second shift mine workers to the surface.  The problem was that 17 third shift workers were stuck.

The Rescue

The rescue basket could only hold four of the trapped workers, plus a rescue worker at a time.  While the crane was being deployed above ground, the workers in the elevator decided who would go first.  At 7am the Ithaca Fire Department posted on their Facebook page, "The first 4 miners, of 17 trapped in a shaft at Cargill salt mine , have been brought to the surface! They are being checked by EMS at this time."  By 7:50 in the morning Lynch alerted the press that rescue operations were in progress. 

The crane operator was praised for his skill in keeping the rescue basket steady as it descended with a rescue worker, who went down with the basket and helped the mine workers get in and secured.  Lanyards attached them to the basket to prevent falling out.  The first trips extracted four workers at a time.

The workers were taken to a nearby locker room where they could take a hot shower and warm up.  The first out went right back out to the shaft to watch their companions being rescued.  They would not leave until the last mine workers were brought out.

"I commend the leadership of Shawn Wilczynski, Chuck Crandall, Toni Adams," LaVigne says.  "I thought they handled this extremely professionally.  You get a really good sense of how people can handle certain things when there is an emergency."

How will it impact the mine and employees? 

When an incident of this magnitude occurs the mine is immediately closed, and mine officials are required to file a plan with the MSHA.

"You need to put together a plan, complete with how everybody is going to be involved with implementing the plan has the proper training, etc.," Klein said early this week.  "The plan has to be implemented before the mine can reopen."

While the Lansing and Ithaca fire departments regularly coordinate with Cargill's own mine rescue teams, a stuck elevator is not the first thing you think of when preparing for potential mine disasters.  People on the scene say the relatively smooth rescue was due to training, strong leadership, a willingness to put their heads together to figure out the best courses of action, and then implementing those ideas.

Cargill invited its people to the Lakewatch Inn shortly after the incident for a closed company meeting.  The rock salt mining operation is based in Cleveland, Ohio, while the corporate headquarters is just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Officials from both came to Lansing to join Wilczynski and other local mine officials.  They told employees that they would continue to be paid for as long as the mine was closed, the same as any 40 hour work week.  They answered questions and asked employees about concerns.

"I love Cargill.  It's a great company," Bell says.  "I have worked there for 17 years.  They go to bat for us.  They take care of us.  They are very safety-minded, and I don't just learn safety there -- I take the safety home and to all my friends."

How soon will the mine reopen?

It could be a matter of days, or perhaps weeks before the mine reopens.  Cargill officials say they will take whatever time is needed to make a thorough investigation of the incident, and repairs to the elevator.

"Probably one of the things they will have to do is lift it up so they can look at that area where it got stuck," Klein said.  "They think it was that rail that keeps the cab centered in the shaft was bent or broken or out of alignment, so when it was going on that may have been what stopped it and got it stuck.  When they go in it's not just going to be a quick peek.  They'll have to check things out."



In a way, the company is lucky in that the winter has been particularly mild so far, reducing the demand for rock salt.  The company has plenty of product topside, so sales will not be impacted at all.

"We were sort of at the point of running out of places to put it," Klein said.  "If this were last year when the weather had really kicked in by now in your area and the Boston area, it might have been a different story, but it's been a mild winter this year.  It's just another reason for everybody on site to be methodical in how they go through the process."

That certainly takes any commercial pressure to resolve the incident out of the equation.  Yesterday morning marked one week after the mine workers were rescued.

"We are still working on repairs and not sure how long things will take," Klein said yesterday. "We want to be methodical and go slowly for safety's sake. Lots of folk from company and outside are working together."


The Cayuga Salt Mine's safety record is impressive.  Safety training trophies line a conference room near the locker rooms where mine workers prepare for their shifts.  The last major safety incident at the Lansing mine was an above-ground fatal accident in 2010 in which a salt bin collapsed on a dump truck, killing the driver and injuring the bin operator.  Before that there had been a fatal accident in the early 1980s.  So major accidents at the mine are few and far between.  But the incident last week was a major challenge for local officials, especially with the national attention it garnered.

"In my ten years in this position we have never had an incident of this magnitude," says Tompkins County Public Information Officer Marcia Lynch.

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