Simon Wheeler, and Anthony Borrelli

The Ithaca Journal

They huddled together to keep warm. They chatted with each other to keep their spirits up. And after being stranded overnight some 900 feet down a mine shaft, 17 Cargill mine workers were pulled to safety Thursday morning in Lansing.

Addressing reporters during a news conference following the rescue, Cargill Mine Manager Shawn Wilczynski spoke with relief: "Everybody's out."

"This is really a proud day for a lot of us," he said. "We came to the rescue of ourselves."

The 17 miners, all men ranging in age from their 20s to 60, were just descending down the shaft to a salt mine below Cayuga Lake at the start of a 10 p.m. shift Wednesday. The men were working as part of a third-shift underground production crew.

WHAT HAPPENED? What caused the Cargill elevator to stop?

HELP: Families waited for Cargill miners' safe return

NY RESPONSE: Gov. Cuomo issues statement on Cargill mine rescue

e-NEWSPAPER: See coverage in The Ithaca Journal

Cargill spokesman Mark Klein said Thursday afternoon that a steel guide beam that keeps the elevator centered is the most likely cause of the mechanical failure. The beam might have come out of line, he said, and that could have caused the elevator to stop in the shaft.

An outgoing shift had used the same two-level elevator about five minutes before the 17 men descended down the shaft, Wilczynski said, and there had been no indications of a possible problem.

Cargill intends to perform a full safety check of the elevator once it can be removed from the shaft, according to Wilczynski, who described that process as a "slow and purposeful approach," without a timetable as of Thursday.

He said Cargill will work with the federal Mine Health and Safety Administration, or MSHA, regarding safety plans in light of the accident, in addition to performing an inspection of the malfunctioned elevator. If necessary, he said, the elevator could be replaced.

"We will not go back to work until all our infrastructure is back in 100 percent safe operating conditions," Wilczynski said. "We will take whatever time is necessary."

Cargill also has a stockpile of salt in its inventory, he added, so there is no concern about the company's inability to serve customers with work temporarily suspended.

The rescue

The crane rescue effort at Cargill Salt Mine in Lansing recovered the first group of workers at about 7 a.m. The last workers were pulled up at about 8:10 a.m.

A crane from Auburn Crane & Rigging was used to lower a rescue basket and bring the men up four at a time.

Throughout the endeavor, company officials and emergency responders kept in radio contact with the miners, said Joe Mareane, Tompkins County administrator.

Emergency management officials said the miners did whatever they could to keep in good spirits during the rescue efforts. Wilczynski said officials got them blankets, heat packs and other supplies, but the miners managed to keep themselves in fair condition while waiting for their rescue.

"All 17 miners carry with them at all times their personal equipment, and that includes their own cap-lamp for illumination," Wilczynski said. "They also had their full complement of food they'd bring down for their dinners; there's one individual ... he brings a lunch bucket full of food every time."

Apart from being cold due to their prolonged exposure to low temperatures, the miners were all in good physical health at the time of their rescue, officials said.

The mine shaft descends 2,300 feet to the deepest salt mine in North America.

The mine produces road de-icing salt from deposits deep beneath Cayuga Lake. According to the company's website, it has been in operation since 1921 as the Rock Salt Corp. Cargill has operated it since 1970.

911 call

An emergency call was placed to the Tompkins County 911 Center at 11:40 p.m. Wednesday, according to a Tompkins County news release. Firefighters from Lansing, Ithaca, Cayuga Heights, along with Tompkins County Sheriff's deputies and the Tompkins County Department of Emergency Management answered the call.

"Our first job was to make sure the elevator was secure and the miners were safe," said Assistant Lansing Fire Chief Dennis Griffin. "We might've changed our game plans five or six times."

Firefighters were prepared to rappel down the shaft and pull out the stranded miners one at at time, he said, but the crane rescue became the best available option.

The elevator has two levels for passengers and, according to Wilczynski, there were passengers on both levels of the device.

Safety issues

Cargill has reported 21 problems with hoists at the Cayuga Lake salt mine since the start of 2013, according to data compiled and made available online by the MSHA. Most of them involved electrical problems that interrupted power to the hoist.

“Hoist” is the term used for elevators and other vertical conveyances at mines. Any time a hoist is out of service for 30 minutes or more, it must be reported as an accident, according to Ellen Smith, owner and managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News, an independent news publication based in Pittsford, Monroe County.

The other active salt mine in New York, American Rock Salt’s facility in Livingston County, has reported only four hoist-related accidents in that time period, the MSHA data show.

The most recent incident at Cargill occurred just five days ago, when a hoist known as No. 3 lost power when an electrical breaker tripped and would not reset. It took 45 minutes to repair. No one was working underground in the mine at the time.

Elevators have failed numerous times while miners were at work, however. Workers were forced to evacuate the mine five times in 2014 and five times in 2013 after one of the elevators failed.

By law, underground miners must have two separate means of egress, Smith said. If one is out of service, the mine must be evacuated.

Cargill officials confirmed Thursday afternoon that hoist No. 3 was involved in the incident.

The MSHA data noted past problems with hoists 1, 2 and 3, although No. 3 had by far the most reported problems.

No injuries have been associated with the incidents, according to accident summaries on the MSHA data website. There is no mention of workers being stranded on a stalled elevator in the past three years.

In March 2010, a contract truck driver was killed at the Lansing mine when a 150-ton salt bin collapsed.

According to the MSHA, the piece of a 150-ton salt bin that corroded and caused the collapse that killed contract truck driver Rolland F. Clark on March 24 was not visible from the ground, and MSHA inspectors are not "trained or expected" to carefully examine such structures.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a statement Thursday praising the rescue and calling for an investigation into the incident.

Steve Orr, of the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, contributed to this story.