Accidents in abandoned mines a hidden hazard in Southern Nevada

Abandoned mines may seem like more of a Northern Nevada problem, but consider this: There has been only one reported accident this year involving someone falling down an old shaft, and it happened earlier this month about a mile from the Railroad Pass Hotel & Casino at the southeastern edge of Henderson.

Bill Durbin has spent more than 20 years securing old mines for the Nevada Division of Minerals, and he was as surprised as anyone.

"This was sure close to town but totally virgin territory," he said. "This was a place we'd never been. There were no indications of any mine workings in this area."

On the afternoon of Nov. 10, three people were out collecting rocks in the McCullough Mountains when they came upon a horizontal shaft that extended about 40 feet into the side of hill. A 33-year-old man entered the shaft and fell down a vertical shaft that had been dug into the floor about 5 feet from the entrance.

It took an 11-person rescue team from the Henderson Fire Department about an hour to pull the man from the bottom of the roughly 30-foot hole.

It was dark out by the time he was hoisted into a Las Vegas police helicopter hovering overhead and flown down the mountain to a waiting ambulance.

Citing privacy laws, Henderson officials would not identify the man or discuss his injuries, except to say he was expected to survive.

Battalion Chief Brian Arboreen said this was his first mine rescue in Henderson, but the department's technical rescue team has been involved in "maybe four of these" in the past 15 years.

Durbin hiked up to the site a few days after the accident and blocked the shaft with barbed wire and a bright orange "Unsafe Mine" sign. While he was up there, he found three other mine openings less than a third of a mile apart.

He suspects the holes were dug by gold prospectors between 1920 and 1950, but he can't find any records to back up his theory.

"What we're going to do is close them," Durbin said. "I would guess within the next couple of months, those will be history."

The state launched its Abandoned Mine Lands program in the mid-1980s. The focus early on was on securing old mines closest to population centers, but the work has since expanded into some hard-to-reach parts of Nevada.

"We're just keeping after it the best we can," Durbin said.

Far more mines are in the northern half of the state, which is why nine of the program's 11 staff members are based there. But central and Southern Nevada have no shortage of dangerous relics from the state's boom-and-bust past.

Since its inception, the program has logged more than 17,000 and secured more than 13,000 hazardous mine openings statewide. Some 2,200 of those hazards are in Clark County, where about 1,550 mine openings have been permanently closed off so far.

Most of those are concentrated near Searchlight, Goodsprings and Nelson, which were among the state's largest mining districts in their heyday, Durbin said.

Mines are closed in a variety of ways, including backfilling, fencing and metal grates that keep people out but allow bats and other small animals to use the tunnels.

Their newest weapon is a type of polyurethane foam that expands to fill mine openings and hardens quickly.

"The manufacturer says you could drive one of those 400-ton ore trucks over the top of it within 24 hours and it wouldn't budge," Durbin said.

The work is paid for with a share of fees the state collects for mining claims and through partnerships with federal agencies and civic groups, including the Boy Scouts.

Falling isn't the only way to get hurt in an old shaft. Abandoned mines can also harbor toxic chemicals, deadly gases, rattlesnakes and other hazards.

Durbin recently oversaw the disposal of a box of dynamite that was found in a natural cave near an old mine in southern Lincoln County. He said the 10 sticks of old powder still packed a mighty blast when a team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives safely detonated them.

"My life is interesting. After 23 years, it's still fun to come to work every day," Durbin said.

What this month's accident demonstrates is that there are still plenty of dangerous old mines still out there that even the experts don't know about, he said. There may be as many as 50,000 of them by some estimates.

"Wherever there has been a search for minerals, there are these openings and mine workings. There are just so many hazards out there that can turn deadly," Durbin said. "Our bottom line is our motto: 'Stay out, stay alive.' "

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.