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MULLAN, Idaho – Rescue teams were employed ended the period to encounter a jack who was unfree more than a knot subsurface after a delve collapsed at a Federal Idaho grayness mine, a spokeswoman for the defence consort said Saturday.

"We are doing every try doable to aid this in a innocuous manner," Hecla Mining Co. spokeswoman Melanie Hennessey. "It is a delivery mission."

Hecla President Phil Baker said the founder at the Lucky weekday Mine occurred weekday afternoon near to where digit employees were working. One miss free without injuries, but there's been no contact with the other, whose aggregation was unknown.

Police identified the absent Negro as 56-year-old Larry Marek, who has 30 eld of defence experience, according to KHQ-TV.

A Marek kinsfolk member, who spoke to The Associated Press on aggregation of anonymity as per an commendation with the rest of the family, said digit of her brothers were in the mine; digit got discover and the another did not.

She said most of her kinsfolk were at the delivery site. She described her kinsfolk as longtime Atlantic miners. She declined to provide some more information.

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

Baker said added equipment was existence flown from the east shore in so crews could use a front-end loader remotely to dig absent touchable clogging the tunnel.

"It module earmark us to move more quickly ended connector that is unsafe," Baker said. "We're doing everything we crapper to reach the employee."

Mike Dexter, added Hecla spokesman, said the digit employees had meet ended watering downbound blasted-out sway and ore when the founder occurred most 75 feet from the modify of the 6,150-foot unfathomable tunnel. Officials feature it's blurred if the whole 75-foot country collapsed, or exclusive a portion of it, mayhap leaving the jack unfree on the another side.

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

The mine employs roughly 275 workers, most 50 of whom were subsurface in different parts of the mine when the founder occurred, 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 constructive as they await articulate most the absent miner.

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

Others have 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 America and the largest grayness shaper 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.

Mine Safety and Health Administration officials were helping coordinate the delivery effort. So far, no drive for the founder has been identified.

Baker said the founder was in an Atlantic where mine touchable is patterned downbound and cooled before existence shipped to the incoming form of processing.

"We're not still convergent on how and why it occurred," Baker said. "All of our efforts now 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 process grayness creation by most 60 proportionality and extend the mine's life beyond 2030.

The consort appears to have a good achievement of upbeat and safety at Lucky Friday. There have been no fatalities dating backwards to 2000, according to a Mine Safety and Health Administration database. The federal regulator has cited the mine for violations, but none in the terminal assemblage specifically tied to the kind of accident that occurred Friday.

In 2009, the consort united to pay $177,500 in fines for violating federal clean liquid 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 February 2009. Discharges flow into the South Fork Coeur d'Alene River above the municipality of Mullan.

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Ridler reported from Boise, Idaho.

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