Miner killed at the Sunshine Mine identified as Nick Rounds

KELLOGG, Idaho — The Silver Valley miner killed Monday at the Sunshine Mine was to be married this summer, his uncle said today. Miner Nick Rounds graduated from Wallace High School in 1996, said his uncle Dave Rounds. Nick Rounds, 36, died about 2 p.m. Monday after becoming caught between a mine shaft and a device called a skip transporting miners, according to the federal Mine Safety & Health Administration. Agency spokeswoman Amy Louviere says two miners were on top of the skip when it moved before one was clear. She says the second miner avoided injury. The agency has dispatched investigators to the mine. Rounds worked at the mine with his father. The family is waiting to learn details of what happened, Dave Rounds said. “A lot of people in the (Silver) Valley will miss him,” the uncle said. “This is a tight community. When we lose someone the whole Valley feels it.” The mine is in the process of reopening for commercial silver production and is not currently in production. It is now owned by Denver-based Sunshine Silver Mines. A corporate spokeswoman in Denver, Monica Brisnehan, said Tuesday she could not release details of the accident. Brisnehan said the mine has been in “care and maintenance mode” since the company acquired it three years ago. About 29 people currently work inside the mine, she said. Located in Big Creek, just outside Kellogg, the Sunshine Mine is noted for decades of prodigious silver production – 365 million ounces during more than a century of drilling and hauling ore to the surface. It also has a notorious history as the site where 91 miners were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in a 1972 mine fire, which ranks among the nation’s worst mining disasters. Arrangements are pending at Shoshone Funeral Services.