CORINTH — Several Upper Valley fire departments rescued a 39-year-old Utah man who got trapped 150 feet down an abandoned copper mine Saturday evening, according to a news release from the Hanover Fire Department.
The man was taken by helicopter to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center with injuries that included hypothermia and was still being treated at the hospital Monday, according to Hanover Fire Chief Martin McMillan. The department has not released the man’s name but McMillan said that he is originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, and was visiting Vermont to do construction work.
The 911 call came in around 9:45 p.m. Saturday after someone who was with the man went to seek help at a nearby house.
The Corinth Fire Department was the first to respond and learned that the man had fallen down the 174-year-old Eureka Mine on Pike Hill in Corinth, the release said.
After getting to the scene, Corinth firefighters called for help from a Technical Rescue Task Force, made up of Hanover, Thetford, Hartford and Lebanon firefighters. The task force got to the mine around 10:50 p.m. and learned that the man had been stuck in water in the mine for over two hours at that point, the release said.
McMillan said firefighters have not had a chance to interview the man so they don’t know why he was in the area or how he fell down the mine shaft. However, he said the mine includes several steep drop-off points, as well as patches of frozen ground and ice. McMillan said it’s possible the man fell or tripped and then slid down the rest of the 150-foot shaft.
He added that the man is “well-versed” in the outdoors, and an avid climber, according to family members.
“It could have been nothing more than a simple accident,” McMillan said.
At the scene, the task force put together a “twin tensioned rope rescue system” and lowered two paramedics into the mine to evaluate the man’s injuries. They were able to put the man in a rescue basket and raise him out of the mine shaft to an awaiting all-terrain vehicle, which firefighters drove almost a mile to a waiting ambulance. The man was eventually taken by helicopter to the hospital.
The time it took for the task force to rescue the man was under an hour, according to the release.
McMillan said calls for rescues out of mine shafts are not common in the Upper Valley.
“These are once-in-a-career, unique situations,” McMillan added.
He said the conditions of this mine in particular made the rescue effort difficult, because of the amount of frozen ground and ice surrounding and inside the mine, as well as the late-night nature of the incident.
The Eureka Mine, which has two mine shafts, is one of two abandoned copper mines on Pike Hill, which were in operation from 1847 to 1919, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The two mines have around 20,000 pounds of tailings — or waste materials left behind from the mining process — spread between them. The waste can produce acid mine drainage, and the EPA has been working on cleaning up the site since doing preliminary investigations there in 2004, according to the agency. However, McMillan said there was no sign of construction or other work happening at the mine Saturday.
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.