5 Workers Dead After Power Plant Fire

Rescue workers gather to enter an Xcel Energy hydroelectric plant in which five maintenance workers are trapped in a pipe after a fire started in the facility near the small mountain community of Georgetown, Colo., on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2007. Rescue workers are toiling to reach the workers as night falls on the mountains. (AP Photo/Ahmad Terry, Rocky Mountain News, pool) (Ahmad Terry - AP)

The smoldering fire broke out about halfway into the pipe. The five workers were trapped at the junction of the 15-degree pipe and the 55-degree pipe, Xcel said.

Personnel from at least a dozen agencies, including a mine rescue crew and an Alpine rescue team, rushed to the site 2 miles outside Georgetown, a former mining town with mountain views, Victorian buildings and bighorn sheep that attract tourists.

Officials lowered breathing masks and piped in oxygen to the men, who had scrambled up the tunnel and sought shelter behind a temporary valve used to prevent water from seeping into the pipe, said Maj. Rick Albers of the Clear Creek County sheriff's department.

At 5:40 p.m., the mine crew entered the bottom of the tunnel to extinguish the fire. At the top of the tunnel, rescuers waited to rappel their way down to reach the workers but authorities later said they decided it would be safer to reach the workers from the bottom.

The hydroelectric plant generates electricity by releasing water from the top reservoir into the lower reservoir, then pumping the water back to the upper reservoir. It was completed in 1967.

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