NY Salt Miners Rescued After Frigid Night in Stuck Elevator

Emergency crews rescued four of 17 miners who were stuck for hours in an elevator 900 feet underground at a central New York salt mine that’s the deepest in the Western Hemisphere

The fourth group of workers emerge from an elevator on Jan. 7, 2016, after they were stuck overnight in a shaft at the Cayuga Salt Mine in Lansing, N.Y. Simon Wheeler/The Ithaca Journal via AP, Pool

LANSING, N.Y.—Seventeen miners spent a frigid night in a broken-down elevator in America’s deepest salt mine, huddling with heat packs and blankets before being rescued early Thursday, Jan. 7, a mishap that highlighted the sometimes-risky work of churning out the road salt that keeps traffic moving on ice and snow.

The workers were descending to start their shifts around 10 p.m. Wednesday when the roughly 5-by-6-foot car abruptly stopped about 90 stories below ground in the Cayuga salt mine while heading to a floor nearly deep enough to fit two Empire State Buildings stacked atop one another.

The miners would spend the next 10 hours stuck in a shaft that’s also an air intake, with night air less than 20 degrees rushing in as they tried to stay warm with heat pads, blankets and containers of coffee that were lowered down, officials said. Ultimately, a crane was brought in from 30 miles away to pull the miners to safety in a cage-like basket, a few at a time, as those gathered up top cheered.

The rescued miners, who ranged in age from 20 to 60, were checked out and found to be uninjured.