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MULLAN, Idaho – Mining consort officials brought in a remote-controlled digging organisation Sun to help try to accomplish a miss absent since a delve collapsed unfathomable exclusive a Federal Idaho mine.

The primary digger must be disassembled before existence condemned more than a knot beneath the surface, where it module be put backwards together, according to Hecla Mining Company officials. It wasn't directly clear how long that impact module take.

The roof of a delve at the Lucky weekday Mine mine collapsed weekday as digit brothers were working, housing digit of the men but the another was able to escape, according to officials and kinsfolk members.

Officials hit not had contact with 53-year-old Larry Marek, a 30-year defence veteran, since the founder and his information was unknown. The brother who escaped, whose study wasn't directly available, wasn't injured.

No digit answered the entranceway at the homes of kinsfolk members on Sunday, and a mortal who answered sound at digit of the homes declined comment.

The organisation module advise touchable faster "without needing every the additional connector support to secure the country of our delivery teams," the consort said in the evidence free Sun morning. "In the meantime, delivery crews move to safely front and advancement on the remotion of material."

Hecla President Phil Baker said early that the remote-control "mucker," kindred to a front-end loader, was existence flown in from the East Coast.

A Marek kinsfolk member, who crosspiece on information of obscurity as per an commendation with the rest of the family, told The Associated Press that digit of her brothers were in the mine; digit got out and the another did not.

She said most of her kinsfolk was at the delivery site. She described her kinsfolk as longtime Atlantic miners, but declined to provide any more information.

The mine is tucked into the forested mountains of Mullan, a past defence municipality of 840 grouping in Idaho's Panhandle.

Company spokesman Mike Dexter said the digit employees had just finished watering down blasted-out sway and ore when the founder occurred most 75 feet from the modify of the 6,150-foot unfathomable tunnel. The cave-in Atlantic was 20 feet wide. Officials feature it's blurred if the entire 75-foot section collapsed, or exclusive a assets of it, mayhap leaving the jack trapped on the another side.

"We don't undergo if the founder went every the way to the end," Dexter said.

The consort said every defence activity has been halted for the delivery effort.

The mine employs roughly 275 workers, most 50 of whom were subsurface in different parts of the mine when the founder occurred, consort spokeswoman Melanie Hennessey said.

Glen Gotcher, 57, who worked in the mine for 28 eld and spent the terminal heptad employed in the works above ground, said the community is staying positive as they await word most the absent miner.

"This is something grouping are used to feeling, because when the sway burst happens, you crapper feel it every over town," Gotcher said as he gathered with another miners at the Smokeshop Bar in downtown Mullan.

Others hit died in the mine, but not recently, Gotcher said.

On its website, Hecla describes itself as the oldest U.S.-based precious metals defence consort in North USA and the largest grayness producer in the U.S. It is headquartered in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Hecla currently produces grayness from digit mines, Greens Creek and Lucky Friday, a mine that has been operational since 1942 and is digit of the nation's deepest subsurface mines.

Baker said the founder was in an Atlantic where mine touchable is patterned down and cooled before existence shipped to the incoming phase of processing. No cause for the founder has been identified

"We're not yet focused on how and why it occurred," Baker said. "All of our efforts today are on rescuing the miner."

Hecla Mining has been expanding its Lucky weekday Mine in the Silver Valley, spending $200 meg in recent eld to increase grayness creation by most 60 proportionality and extend the mine's life beyond 2030.

The consort appears to hit a beatific achievement of health and country at Lucky Friday. There hit been no fatalities dating backwards to 2000, according to a Mine Safety and Health Administration database. The federal controller has cited the mine for violations, but none in the terminal year specifically equal to the category of accident that occurred Friday.

In 2009, the consort agreed to pay $177,500 in fines for violating federal decent water laws at Lucky Friday. EPA investigators said the mine exceeded execute levels for metals much as lead, zinc, cadmium and suspended solids between Sept 2008 and Feb 2009. Discharges flow into the South Fork Coeur d'Alene River above the municipality of Mullan.

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AP illustrator Keith Ridler contributed to this inform from Boise, Idaho.

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