17 New York miners rescued from elevator stuck 900 feet below ground

Cargill Inc. logo on a Geneva building.
(Image credit: DENIS BALIBOUSE/Reuters/Corbis)

Emergency crews scrambled overnight to rescue 17 miners trapped in an elevator in an upstate New York salt mine, The Associated Press reports. The men were stuck 900 feet below ground for nearly 11 hours; the Cayuga Salt Mine, in the Finger Lakes region, is the deepest of its kind in North America. By Thursday morning, all of the men had been rescued.

"Everyone's fine, and things are going well," Tompkins County emergency response department spokeswoman Marcia Winch said.

The miners were descending to the floor of the 2,300-foot mine when the elevator broke around 10 p.m. Wednesday. The mine will be closed for the rest of the week as company and federal safety inspectors evaluate what caused the elevator to break.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.