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

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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