39 miners trapped underground for 24 hours after incident in Canada: The rescue operation will take time
Sylvie Claire / September 28, 2021
Thirty-nine employees of a mine in eastern Canada have been trapped underground since Sunday afternoon after an incident that cut off access to the main exit, the Vale group, which owns the mine, said Monday.
None of the miners were injured and they had access to food and water, the group added, which hopes to evacuate them by Monday evening.
The rescue team reached the miners and began evacuating them toward a secondary exit via a ladder system, Brazilian company Vale said in a statement.
No one was on board the main conveyor system when the incident occurred, Vale spokeswoman Danica Pagnutti told Radio Canada. She said a piece of heavy equipment collided with the elevator on that system.
We know the rescue operation will take time and we are relieved to hear that no miners are injured, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, the province where the mine is located, said on Twitter.
All operations at this Totten site in Sudbury have been halted since Sunday and the group says it will conduct an assessment before resuming production.
The mine had closed in 1972 but Vale completed work and reopened it in 2014. In the first six months of 2021, some 3,600 tons of finished nickel were extracted from it.