Mine where girl fell to death only one of more than 50,000 in state

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 1999 | 9:58 a.m.

The abandoned mine shaft near Beatty where an 11-year-old Las Vegas girl fell to her death last week is one of more than 40,000 dangerous holes around the state that have never been identified, a state official said.

Alan Coyner, Nevada Division of Minerals administrator, said that his department has identified only about 7,550 openings out of an estimated 50,000 that litter the state.

Coyner said of those identified openings, 5,324 have been fenced off or bulldozed, but that cost and environmental considerations prevent the state from doing the same to all dangerous mines.

Michelle Davies, a sixth grader at Swainston Middle School, fell to her death Friday while playing with her brother about three miles north of Beatty.

The girl likely got over the crest of the opening and slid down, unable to climb out, Coyner said.

"It's a trap. You get to the crest and slide," Coyner said. "The tendency would be that once you get off the edge of one of these things, it's pretty hard to recover."

Davies, daughter of Dean and Nichole Davies of Las Vegas, was in the desert with her father Friday morning. Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke said the Davies were part of a flagging crew at a checkpoint for a road race from Las Vegas to Reno. The girl and her 5-year-old brother were exploring, Lieseke said, when the accident occurred.

"These kinds of things shouldn't happen," the sheriff said. "There should have been a fence there."

Over 28 years, there have been 12 recorded deaths in abandoned digs. Coyner said the number is relatively few, considering the number of potentially dangerous mines in the state.

"There is a universe of 50,000 things similar to what caused this tragedy on Friday," Coyner said.

Prospectors have explored Nevada desert since 1850, looking for precious metals.

A 32-post fence was put around the shaft where the accident occurred, but Coyner said not all mines can be protected.

The Nevada Administrative Code rates the danger of an abandoned mine based on how close it is to a municipality and how visible and deep it is. Though the Beatty mine, which Lieseke said was on a stretch of Bureau of Land Management property, had not been located by state authorities, it likely would have garnered a "moderate hazard" rating before the accident.