Security personnel have sealed off the mine, which is about 200km (124 miles) south-east of the state capital of Jos, as investigations get under way to find out the cause of the leak.

State officials are yet to visit the area and response efforts have reportedly been slow because of security concerns – armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, have been active there in recent years.

Safiyanu Haruna, one of the miners who found the bodies at the start of his shift, told the BBC that some of the miners who were underground survived and were taken to a hospital in Wase for treatment.

[BBC]

“I want to offer my condolences to the family in this very trying time,” Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo said on Wednesday.

The bodies of the eight dead skiers are still trapped in the snow and can’t yet be recovered due to “pretty horrific” conditions, officials said.

Since the avalanche, another 3ft (.9m) of snow has fallen on the area, Tahoe National Forest supervisor Chris Feutrier said.

“The hazard remains high,” he said.

Once the bodies are recovered, they will be transported to the Placer County morgue.

Families of the deceased have been notified. Authorities have not yet released any of their names.

Officials say the victims are seven women and two men.

Sheriff Woo said the rescue operation was a joint effort involving two teams and roughly 50 crew members who had to traverse “extreme weather conditions” using specialised equipment.

At 17:30 local time on Tuesday, search teams arrived to an area roughly two miles (3.2km) from where survivors were sheltering in make-shift tents, and had to ski in from there.

Two of the six survivors had to be carried back and “could not walk because of the injuries they sustained during the avalanche”, Sheriff Moon said. They were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Among the survivors, one was a guide and five were clients of the Blackbird Mountain guided tour.

The entire ski group consisted of a mix of 11 recreational skiers and four ski guides.

The avalanche on Tuesday occurred as they were making their way back at the end of a three-day trip.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said in a post on X that state authorities were “co-ordinating an all-hands search-and-rescue effort” with local emergency teams.

Conditions on Wednesday remained dangerous, multiple officials said, with Woo describing the climate as “treacherous”.

“Avoid the back country,” he said. “Please allow us to focus all of our resources on continuing to recover these bodies for the family and bring them home.”

The avalanche that trapped the skiers was rated as a D2.5 on a destructive potential scale of D1 to D5, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center, which would mean it was over half a mile in length and would have a deposit of around 6.5ft (2 metres).

The Boreal Mountain Ski Resort, which is near where the accident occurred, has reported over 30in (76cm) of snowfall since Tuesday.

The resort decided to close on Tuesday because of high winds and low visibility.

The storm has also closed several highways, including Interstate 80 and Highway 50.

[BBC]