One person was killed and 12 people were rescued after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said.
The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 500 feet (152 meters) beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.
The 12 adults who were trapped about 1,000 feet (305 meters) below ground had access to water and used radios to communicate with authorities, who told them there was an elevator issue, Mikesell said.
The selectively sparse details make me wonder what happened. From what I can infer, the elevator’s travel is 1000 feet. It malfunctioned at 500 feet. Presumably it didn’t crash 500 feet or there would be far more people dead and many serious injuries. Most elevators have numerous mechanisms to prevent sudden drops even if the cable snaps. An elevator is SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to cause injury by flying UP then crashing down.
I’m wondering if an already unstable someone with claustrophobia didn’t go absolutely bonkers, start hurting people, and was murdered. Six hours in a small room with water is hardly a life-threatening crisis. Some people work daily in worse conditions.
Who knows, but I’m assuming something went down in that elevator considering how the details of the injuries and death are specifically omitted.
Second theory: someone died from a heart attack or something similar, and sitting in a box 1000 feet underground with a dead body eventually caused someone to snap, and then they freaked out and hurt others before they were injured in the process of being restrained.
Edit: found more info. Looks like there were five people in the elevator. The person that died was the tour guide, who hit the emergency stop. It’s possible he was trying to do something about it, because the door was broken when it was inspected. I’m thinking he was trying to fix the door or something and then the elevator dropped and smashed whatever parts of him that were outside the door. The other four in the elevator were all minorly injured, largely neck and back pain. So maybe it did do a semi-controlled drop.
The other uninjured people weren’t in the elevator they were in the tour area below and had already come down earlier. They were the ones trapped for six hours. Plenty of space. They had water and they lowered pizza down for them.
The ones in the elevator were rescued within 20min.