Officials with Kennecott Utah Copper say a landslide that they’ve been anticipating for months has happened in Brigham Canyon Mine. UPR’s Brianna Bodily has more on the condition of employees, and precautions Kennecott took to avoid injury.
Kennecott spokesman Kyle Bennett said no one was injured when the slide took place, at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday in the North East part of the mine.
"I'm very happy to say that all of our employees are safe and accounted for, they're all at home. The great outcome is that our people are safe and that's the most important thing for us," Bennett said.
Engineers had detected ground movement since February, and had closed and relocated a visitors center to prepare. Bennett said the company insured employees weren't working in the possible slide path.
"We have restricted access as a safety precaution, we don't want anybody in the vicinity of this slide as we continue to monitor it," Bennett said. "The rest of our operations, though, employees are reporting to work as regularly scheduled at other plants, so work is taking place across our operation, just not at the mine at this time."
Crews have already begun assessing the size of the slide and are expected to finish in a few days.
"They're continuing to use a number of sophisticated systems and so it will probably be a couple of days before we have a really good assessment of the size and the impact to the business," Bennett said.
Brianna’s passion for journalism comes from a love of learning and a desire to know everything. She studies Broadcast Journalism and Political Science at Utah State University and hopes one day to travel the world reporting hard news. She also works as the Aggie Radio news director and a reporter for USU TV.