Gargantuan equipment emerges from tomb caused by landslide

Does anyone know if the visitor's center will re-open and when?

Interesting discussion on the meaning of "tomb." Many years ago, when our 5th grade class toured Bingham Canyon, we walked through the long tunnel (as I remember nearly a mile in length) to the town of Copperton, where we enjoyed a picnic lunch at a beautiful park. I haven't been to Bingham Canyon since, but I seem to recollect that the town of Copperton, the tunnel, and several other areas (the Town of Lark comes to mind) have all been swallowed up in the mine. What word do we use to describe that condition? I'm having a hard time stretching "tomb" to fit what is now open air in the space where these areas previously existed.

"That 400,000 tons of dirt is what is moved on a single day. Some 17 million tons of material have been moved from the bottom of the mine alone since the slide occurred."

I'm confused. If they've been moving dirt from the slide since November, and they've only moved 17 million tons, that's not 400,000 tons a day -- that 170,000 tons/day figuring a minimum o 100 days. Still a lot of material, but misleading. Only 150 million tons to go. At 170,000 tons/day, that's 2 1/2 more years....

Maybe the sale of scrap metal is paying for the expenses of excavating and cutting up the lost equipment, but it is nowhere close to covering what this landslide is costing Rio Tinto. The lost production and other costs are crippling, and I don't think the company is being completely honest in how much it has and is losing.

Amy Joi O'Donoghue Please do more research on words. A simple google search would show you that the word "blowtorch" does not describe the equipment that is being used. A "blowtorch" is a small usually liquid fueled device that is used today mostly by plumbers to heat lead.

The device that is used in the photos is an oxyacetylene cutting torch not a blowtorch.

Giant fire breathing equipment emerges from tomb and devours eclectic portions of Salt Lake City in one gulp and without so much as a burp.

Headlines sell papers, I guess.

I figured they got two million dollars from the scrap metal sale...

Samhill posed an interesting question. Just what did that mean?

@sthomaslewis:
"Can someone please explain to me how a landslide causes a tomb?"

It was clearly a reference to the equipment being buried (entombed) in the landslide. Obviously, there was not a sarcophagus or crypt constructed around the trucks.

someone should be filming this recovery effort because it would make a fascinating documentary.

@sthomaslewis, the landslide buried the equipment; thus it was metaphorically a tomb. I clicked on the link afraid that someone had actually been buried and died in the landslide. Glad that was not the case. It is slightly irresponsible, IMO, to use that word in the headline, when no people died.

@sthomaslewis - The "tomb" analogy was because these huge tractor machines were buried in the earth as a result of the landslide, so it's kind of like a tomb for the tractors.

Can someone please explain to me how a landslide causes a tomb? Either the tomb was there before the landslide, or it was not. But I do not see how a landslide can create a tomb.

Interesting story, but there was one part that had me scratching my head a bit. It has to do with the following, "...the company has been able to cut its costs to practically zero via the sale of more than $2 million pounds of the scrap metal."

Does the dollar sign ($) in front of the "2" mean that the "million pounds of the scrap metal" was only worth $2? Hard to believe.

Or, as I suspect, is it simply a typo and the sentence is actually talking only about, "2 million pounds of the scrap metal"?