A remote-controlled scoop has begun removing a pile of debris 20 to 30 meters long and seven to eight metres high to gain access to three workers trapped at the Red Chris mine in northern British Columbia, the mine’s owner said Thursday.
The statement from Newmont Corp. said specialized drones have also been sent in to assess the geotechnical conditions in the underground tunnel at the gold and copper mine.
Hy-Tech Drilling, based in Smithers, B.C., said in a statement that the three workers trapped by two rockfalls on Tuesday are its employees, and that it is working closely with Newmont to support the rescue efforts.
Newmont CEO Tom Palmer said on an earnings call Thursday that the company’s focus is on restoring communications to the refuge chamber where the workers have retreated, then safely reestablishing access and bringing them back to the surface.
“We will conduct a thorough and independent investigation into the factors that led to this event,” he said, adding that findings would be shared across the industry.
Palmer said rescuers were devising “various plans” to reach the workers, which could include using a vent shaft.
Dwayne Tannant, a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of B.C.’s Okanagan campus, said the debris is a “substantial volume of rock” that must be shifted in order to rescue the workers.
“Oftentimes, you might see something an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude smaller, and that would still be a serious incident,” he said.
Tannant said the nature of the debris will influence the course of the rescue effort.
“If you have large blocks of rock mixed into that pile of debris, those are hard to remove. You can’t scoop them up,” he said in an interview.
“I’m hoping that the debris that is lying in the tunnel is of a manageable size in terms of the individual blocks (so) it can be easily scooped up and removed.”
B.C. Premier David Eby previously identified the workers as being from B.C. and Ontario, but Hy-Tech spokeswoman Julie Masse said in an interview Thursday that the three are from Ontario, Manitoba and B.C.
Masse said the workers are diamond drillers, referring to the type of bit used to drill into the ground.
She said the company is not releasing any personal information about the workers out of respect for their families.
The statement from Hy-Tech said its critical incident response team had been activated and company leadership was on site at the Red Chris mine.
“We take incidents of this nature extremely seriously. The safety and well-being of our employees is our highest priority, and our emergency protocols were activated immediately,” the statement said.
Newmont has said the workers were located in a “non-producing” part of the mine and confirmed they had safely reached a refuge bay equipped with food and water before the second collapse cut off communications.
“The area of the refuge chambers is not in the same area as the fall of ground and is understood to be stable and well-ventilated,” the company said.
The so-called MineArc refuge chamber is designed to support 16 people and additional chambers are accessible nearby should the workers need them, it said.
The company said teams were restoring the specialized communication system to try to re-establish contact with the workers.
Tannant said he has been inside many refuge stations that would be similar to the one where the trapped workers are sheltering.
He said the refuge areas, which are mandatory for B.C. mines, are typically built at the end of a smaller tunnel and sealed with a steel door.
They have lighting, with some places to sit and perhaps some cots for sleeping, along with food and water, he said.
Tannant said the mining company and rescue teams will be reluctant to have the trapped workers walk beneath unsupported rock, so the effort will likely involve shoring up the passageway once enough debris has been cleared.
“They probably have a drill that could drill holes and install this rock support,” he said.
“They may even need to spray concrete, coat the wall with concrete to help stabilize and reinforce it. So, the geotechnical assessment will be deciding what is the appropriate … ground support or rock support to stabilize the area.”
The rescue effort involves specialized drones, and Tannant said the drones used in underground mining operations are designed to fly in dark, confined spaces and are typically equipped with a laser scanner to get a picture of the area.
“They’ll fly that drone up and over the debris, because there’s probably a cavity or a cavern above it now, and they will create a 3D image of that space,” he said.
Using that image, experts can get a sense of the nature of the rock and the spacing of any faults or fractures, he said.
“That will be deployed to kind of look at the nature of the failure and its cause, and of course, that will feed back into forensic analysis of why did it occur,” he said.
“I’m anticipating there’s some sort of geological explanation for these falls of ground, geological combined with the nature of the rock support that was used in that section of the tunnel,” Tannant said.
Production at the mine has been paused while the rescue effort continues.
The mine is mostly open pit, but Newmont said in an earlier statement that development of underground block-cave mining began in 2019, four years after the mine’s first production date.
The workers were more than 500 metres past the affected zone when the first rocks fell, and they were asked to relocate to the refuge before the second fall.
“Following the first event, contact was established with the individuals and confirmation was received that they had safely relocated to one of multiple self-contained refuge bays,” the company’s statement said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 24. 2025.
Brenna Owen and Ashley Joannou, The Canadian Press
