Funds being raised to help family of miner killed near Wallace
Blaik Nutting
Photo via GoFundMe
The miner who died Tuesday at the Galena Mine Complex near Wallace is being fondly remembered by friends on social media and funds are being raised to help pay for funeral costs and provide some support for the man’s fiancee and young child.
Blaik Nutting, 26, was struck and killed by falling ground during routine underground operations.
“He was the best of us. In my eyes he was always the perfect man. Tough but sensitive and loving. He was the kind of friend you could hit up at any time of night and if you needed him, he would be there no questions asked,” wrote Dillon Strong, who described Nutting on Facebook as a best friend.
Nutting’s Facebook page states he attended Lake City High School in Coeur d’Alene.
Mine operations were suspended Tuesday following the incident, and miners returned to work Thursday at the Galena, where a flag waved at half-mast, reported the Shoshone News-Press.
A preliminary investigative report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration states Nutting was an underground stope miner with more than five years of mining experience.
“We can’t work in the location of the accident. MSHA has ordered that area closed pending their investigation and there is no estimated time for completion,” Dave Riggleman, the mine's general manager, told the Shoshone News-Press. “Determination of cause and any other factors that may have contributed will have to wait for MSHA’s report, which they told us today could take months.”
There were 81 employees working in the mine at the time of the incident.
Owned and operated by Americas Gold and Silver, the Galena Mine had not experienced a fatality since 2010. Tuesday’s accident also marks the first mining-related fatality since 2014.
A GoFundMe campaign set up by a family member to raise funds for funeral costs had raised $23,785 by 8 p.m. Friday.