KELLOGG, Idaho — Failures by management of the Sunshine Mine led to the death of mine worker Nicholas P. Rounds last June, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration concluded in a report issued Friday.
Rounds, 36, was crushed to death by an elevator while working in the elevator shaft on June 2, 2014. The mine is located in Kellogg in northern Idaho’s Silver Valley.
“The accident occurred due to management’s failure to identify possible hazards and establish safe work procedures associated with performing shaft maintenance work,” the report concluded.
Specifically, there was not a safe place for miners to tie the lanyards that prevented them from falling down the shaft while working, the report said.
Rounds, who had worked as a miner for 18 years, had tied his lanyard to a metal rod located on the shaft wall behind him.
When the elevator, which is known as a skip, started to rise, Rounds was pulled into the space between the shaft and the skip and killed.
The report said he died of multiple body fractures and internal injuries.
The report said mine managers have since “developed and implemented procedures for shaft maintenance work” and trained miners in those procedures.
The Sunshine Mine is not currently in production, and has been in a “care and maintenance mode” since it was acquired by Silver Opportunity Partners LLC three years ago.
The mine has a troubled history.
There was a fire in the mine in 2012 and 12 people were safely evacuated.
In 1972, a fire inside the mine killed 91 workers and was one of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history. A monument to the lost miners stands beside Interstate 90 near the mine.
One of the world’s largest silver producers, the Sunshine Mine has produced more than 360 million ounces of silver in the past 125 years, and still has rich reserves.
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