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The
11-story structure at the Martin Mine Prep Plant in Martin
County caved in on Tuesday evening, the Kentucky Emergency
Management agency said in a statement. The two workers were
trapped underneath multiple floors of concrete and steel.
Authorities did not say what caused the collapse of the
building, which has not been in use for several years. The men
were inside the building, carrying out work to dismantle it.
Governor Andy Beshear confirmed on social media that one of the
two trapped workers was dead. The governor issued a state of
emergency for Martin County, which mobilizes state resources to
assist at the scene.
Martin County Sheriff John Kirk said rescuers had been speaking
with one of the trapped men, but that he subsequently died. The
other missing man has not been found in the rubble.
"We still are attempting to locate him," Kirk said of the
missing man. "We are still considering it a rescue operation."
Officials said at an afternoon press conference at the site of
the collapse in eastern Kentucky near the border with West
Virginia that they continued searching for the missing man.
Lon Lafferty, Martin County's judge executive, the top elected
official, said "as of right now, the situation doesn't look
good."
"But we haven't given up hope on the second worker," Lafferty
said, adding the scene was "horrific."
"I remember being in New York after 9/11, and those images that
you see there, it's kind of what you see," Lafferty said.
Jeremy Slinker, the state director of emergency management, said
urban search and rescue teams from around Kentucky had arrived
to help local rescuers in their search for the missing man, with
whom they have had no contact.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Editing by Rod
Nickel and Lincoln Feast)
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