The Associated Press
KIMBERLEY, British Columbia — Four people were found dead Wednesday in a Canadian lead mine, and the mountain community’s mayor said they may have been overcome by poisonous gas.
The first victim may have been dead for two days, and search for him after he failed to come home led to the three other deaths, Royal Canadian Police said.
Kimberley’s mayor, Jim Ogilvie, said the tragic series of events began when a contractor testing acid-tainted water at an enclosed pumping station disappeared at Teck Cominco’s decommissioned Sullivan mine in southeastern British Columbia.
An employee of Teck Cominco Ltd., which owns the old mine, discovered the man floating in the well of the above-ground pump house, Ogilvie said.
The employee went to his rescue after calling 911 but was also overcome by the fumes, Ogilvie said.
Two paramedics from the British Columbia Ambulance Service responding to the call were also stricken. Their bodies were found by members of the Kimberley Fire Department who had followed up the initial emergency call.
Ogilvie said he was told the four may have succumbed to hydrogen sulphide, a toxic gas fatal in minute quantities. He said the dead paramedics apparently had hazardous-materials training but were not wearing protective gear when they entered the ground-level pumping station.
Teck Cominco spokesman David Parker identified the dead as a Teck employee, an outside consultant contracted to work on the mine’s decommissioning and two ambulance paramedics. The Sullivan lead-zinc mine closed officially on Dec. 21, 2001, after 92 years of production.
Oglivie said all four victims were from Kimberley, a mountain community of about 6,600 people some 310 miles east of Vancouver.
“Four deaths in a community our size is a very serious situation,” he said. “There’ll be no one that isn’t touched in some way by this accident.”