Indiana mine accident kills 3 workers

August 10, 2007

West Princeton, Indiana - An accident at an air shaft under construction at the Gibson County Coal Company has killed three contractors, according to local police.

The Associated Press reports that Detective Mike Hurt said the people died in a basket used to transport people up and down a 600-foot air shaft, but he could say whether they fell. Police said it's unknown how many miners were in the mine at the time.

"At this point we have people trying to retrieve the bodies and we know there was no explosion," said Mike Hurt of the Princeton police reports CNN.

Local TV station 6News reports that a firefighter with knowledge of the situation told that a dispatcher initially said one person died in the accident and that two helicopters were being sent to the scene. The dispatcher later said the helicopters were turned back because others had died and there was no one else to take to a hospital, the firefighter said.

The firefighter described the accident as a collapse.

The Princeton Daily Carrier newspaper said Gibson County Coroner was dispatched to the scene of some type of incident at Gibson County Coal's air shaft construction site north of the Ind. 64/65 junction northwest of Princeton shortly before 11 a.m. Friday.

The mine -- owned by Alliance Resource Partners LLP, the fourth-largest coal producer in the eastern United States -- was opened in 2000 and has a capacity of 700 tons an hour.

Gibson County Coal operates the Gibson mine, an underground mining complex located near the city of Princeton in Gibson County, Indiana.

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