Dead spelunker to be left in cave

Great Debates
201

Just a personal point of view.

I’ve been in many, many small caves like this. Very, very few, if any, for that matter, have I thought along the lines of “no way are you ever gonna get a body outa here”. A seriously injured person without making it worse ? Oh yeah. A body ? Can do, maybe.

Thats not to say that 20 hours into trying with an army of cavers working round the clock and noting that we have only gotten 1 percent of the way to the entrance at which point I wouldn’t go “this aint gonna work”. But this can’t do attitude regarding body recovery is bothersome to me.

I am still of the opinion that this a bad idea. The body is gonna be there. The cave will NOW be even MORE infamous because a body is STILL there rather than “just” somebody died there. So, the legend will take much longer to fade. Every few years there will be yet another newspaper article when the news is slow. And now all the flashlight cavers will still be drawn, if not more drawn to that area, because of this legend. They will just focus their efforts on the other surrounding caves in the area. And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that THOSE caves are about the same danger wise as the one now sealed. That just makes matters worse. And I’d still wager that down the line the family will wish the body was recovered. And the blasting of the passage leading to the body will just make it ACTUALLY dangerous to recover the body once someone decides to try to do it. A small passage is very safe if you fit and know your limits. A passage blasted shut is way more dangerous and uncertain.

202

I dunno; how long would it take a person to rot to the point of not stinking in a cave? I imagine it would be pretty cold down there, it may take some time.

203

IIRC the temp there is around 70 F.

IF they could NOT have removed the body they shoulda just sealed the cave for a year or two or whatever it takes for total decomposition. Then go in and remove the bones. Maybe throw in some flesh eating beetles first (seriously). Then you can either seal that passage or the whole cave or change the access policy or whatever.

On the surface, over the entrance, pour the biggest and heaviest concrete block you can that takes a REALLY big crane to lift. Nobody is gonna get past that on the sly while your waiting for the body to decay.

IMO the only way they could have done this worse is leave the body in there without doing anything once he died. Its a perfect storm of emotion, frustration, cant do attitude, lack of forward thinking, and general ignorance in all things caving.

204

Just posting as another local who has actually been in the cave (tho not very far). I’m totally opposed to closing the cave, people drown in the lake and fall off cliffs several times a year, they don’t close those off.

205

If they completely cave it in then curiosity seekers shouldn’t be an issue. Also, I’m sure his next of kin already gave up their right of disposition when agreeing the body is staying in the cave. Rights of disposition can also be overturned if the governing state laws provide a clause for the body being unrecoverable. Either way nobody has right of disposition for that body anymore so nobody can step forward in the future and try to claim it.

206

Regarding deaths of two US cavers left dead in caves. One in the US. One in Mexico. The one in the US WAS dangerous to recovery (at least right around the time of death). The one in Mexico woulda been the equivalent of a Mt Everest body recovery (too damn hard AND dangerous to recovery personel).

Guess, what ?

Those bodies came out eventually. Family wishes and public pressure are very strong.

If the cave was really a fricking death trap, I’d be the first to say let it stay. But I am pretty damn sure it isnt for folks who know what they are doing. You might have to chop up the body, you might have to wait a bit just for bones, but its gettable outable.

207

Well, sure, when the body decays to bones, or just mostly mummifies (whichever will happen in this particular cave) it will be easier to get out. If it were MY relative I would prefer the person to remain where he is than to risk other lives getting him out, but not everyone feels this way and I’ll be the first to admit I am not qualified to judge how difficult/dangerous recovery is in this case anyhow.

However, having looked at the posted links it seems to me that for someone who does NOT “know what they are doing” and lacks some sense this cave could, indeed, be lethal. Given the relative ease of access that makes this cave an attractive nuisance. Apparently the cave was gated, but that gate kept being defeated (lock stolen/broken). If an attractive nuisance can’t be secured there is an argument for rendering it truly inaccessible. That might mean the removal of a public pool… or sealing off a cave.

Although I am not a caver (to be honest, I’m claustrophobic enough that just looking at people going through the crawls made me a little sick to my stomach) I don’t really like seeing it sealed off, either. I’d much prefer that some way be worked out so that people going into the cave are properly prepared and warned of dangers and drunken fools, foolish amateurs, and just plain idiots are prevented from ruining the place for others. I don’t know, maybe they need a hoop you have to pass through saying “You must be this skinny to go in this part of the cave” or something. I’d think the cavers would be better qualified to speak to that than I would be. I don’t like responsible cavers who are informed of the risks to be blocked in their hobby. I think accessible caves are necessary to the continuance of spelunking and training of people.

The problem, once again, comes down to people being stupid. I don’t know if the current deceased person was ill-equipped, ill-prepared, or just had bad luck. I’m not blaming him because I don’t know why or how he became so thoroughly jammed into a hole. The problem is that there are far too many idiots out there who will happily go down the hole without even a smidgeon of foresight or common sense, thereby incurring costs to the rest of us for their stupidity as well as screwing up a place that a lot of people obviously have enjoyed over the years.

208

Forgive me for missing (in a timely manner) most of this page 3? of the thread.

Any given year there about 3 “people died in caves” in the USA.

Of THOSE, about one is a “an organized caver in a cave he has some clue about or he/she has some idea of what there are doing”.

The other 2 are random/clueless people who happened to meet bad things in a cave.

Forgot to add, and often these “real caver” deaths are deaths on the cutting edge of caver activity, not the kind of stuff a “real caver” would experience on any typical saturday excursion.

And of that remaining one “caver who knows what they are doing” about half of those are doing something REALLY stupid that no other caver would do under normal circumstances (and god only knows why) and the other half are shit happens / nobody is perfect.

So, you have somewhere between 0.5 and 1 “real cavers” dieing every year for every 10,000 “real cavers”. Compare that with just about any other real life risks. And, without getting all spreadsheet on this issue, I suspect I am being more pestismistic with the numbers than is realistic.

209

More rumor mill stuff…one of which I already really “knew” and one which I highly suspected.

Real Cavers that were actually involved in this rescue were not really part of the final decision to give up and leave the body there.

Second. The cavers involved in this are under a gag order of sorts.

210

Here are some comments from maladroit’s link. Claustrophobia Porn in a way, but details I haven’t read elsewhere…

*You can already crawl back through a small tube to the body and attach ropes to the multiplicity of webbing around the feet. But you can’t pull the body out without pulling it in half. Think of a 200 pound body lying prostrate in a hole sloping at about 45 degrees or more, head down. The body virtually fills the entire hole. Think of the enormous friction present. There is more to moving the body than by just lifting 200 pounds. There is no room for the lone rescuer at the body to move except to back out or even to move his arms back down to his side. You have to tow the body over of a slight bend with a small ridge. The stomach is pushed all the way in by the bend and the lower ribcage ribs hang on the ridge at the bend making further movement impossible.

You have a multiple pulley system that must exert hundreds of pounds of tension, but nothing gives, and it is absolutely impossible to reach in to elevate that part of the body that is at the bend. There is no room. Repeat, there is no room! You pull until the rock around the anchor point breaks away and the body slides back down. This is the information that was gleaned from the sheriff’s department spokesman during several TV interviews and can be revised when the final report is issued. The man is now dead. The stench is terrible. Further action is not feasible. They only had a window of 27 hours before the man gave up the ghost, which was precious little time to get elaborate schemes into play. Conjecture is that the time with his head 4 feet lower than his feet was the cause of death.

My understanding is that they had a small air-powered jackhammer all the way in there and did remove rock. I imagine the danger in removing rock in the steep incline where the body is, is rock rolling down and wedging against the body but I wasn’t there and don’t really know. There is no way you would be able to reach around your tool to prevent it in such a constricted environment.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/man-trappe … id=9184843
“The rib cage is built from the top-down so the lungs expand into the body cavity,” said Wright. But when someone is upside down, the lungs “are working against the weight of your liver, of your intestines and the breathing muscles have a difficult time overcoming that.”

Another Danger to Being Upside Down: Blood

“The blood vessels in the legs are endowed with fibers which constrict them when we stand upright, but the brain’s arteries do not have that capacity,” said Dr. Jay N. Cohn, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.
n other words, our body is designed to prevent blood from pooling at our feet when we stand up, but it isn’t designed to prevent blood from pooling in our head if we are turned upside down.

Emily and Joey: John Jones
We had a map of the cave and got to a part where we couldn’t find where it continued, so we each took a route that looked like it could be the right way. It is this part of the story that I keep recalling over and over in my head, because at this point I asked John if he wanted to explore the spot, which we later would learn is called the “Ed’s Push” area. He went in to the spot face first because he was climbing up, but then it curved and started heading downwards, then it got too small for him to push himself backwards up against gravity, so he slid down further and became wedged.

That last was from a blog by one of the people in the group of the guy who was trapped.

One of the cave’s managers was quoted as saying that it should be clear to visitors what passages to take, because the untraversed areas would be dusty and the explored areas smooth.

211

If anyone is interested in a yearly tabulation of mainly US caving accidents and incidents, here ya go (safe for work). Don’t confuse cave deaths with **cave diving **deaths. The activities are so different in many ways. It would be like comparing hiking and mountain climbing.

I had a short email exchange with a caver who should really know his accident/incident statistics. He agreed that my .5 to 1 outa 10,000 yearly death risk was sound. He thought it could be way too HIGH even, but at the very least it is a good upper bound of the risk level.

Did some quick internet researching and came up with the following back of the envelope numbers.

Lets assume everybody in the US went caving, but had proper equipment and training , Real Cavers.

15 to 30,000 people would die every year.

If everyone drove, between 40,000 and 80,000 would die in automobile accidents. About 3 to 6 million would be injured.

30,000 people die from household accidents every year. 8 million have a disabling injury.

20,000 people die from the flu. 100,000 get it bad enough to be hospitalized.

15,000 are murdered.

750,000 heart attack deaths per year.

150,000 lung cancer deaths.

40,000 breast cancer deaths.

4,000 from drownings. Now if everybody was around or in water with high frequency that number would likely be much bigger.

If the thought of going in a cave scares the crap outa you, thats certainly understandable. But IMO its darn hard to make a case for it being “dangerous”. It certainly aint much more dangerous, and could well be less dangerous than just daily routine living.

212

The thing is, there are certain risks we all have to face. I mean, walking can be dangerous, but short of buying a wheelchair for everyone we have to walk. Caving is an optional risk. Most people seem to feel optional risks need to be significantly safer than mandatory risks. Thus, higher tolerance for carnage on the roads (as driving is perceived as necessary) than for caving.

213

This sounds like my worst nightmare, I can’t imagine why anyone would enjoy caving. At least with other high risk sports like sky diving, you’d die instantly in an accident, and not a 27-hour blind, tortuous death.

214

So, I take it your whole life consists only of things you HAVE to do ?

215

Um, no, I nowhere stated that was MY belief system, just that it seems to be one held by many people. Really, Billfish, it doesn’t help you to jump on me when I’ve already stated that I’m in favor of finding a way to keep the cave open and allowing people to take risks for their own amusement. I fly small airplanes as a hobby, and not even the safest of those, so I understand the problem of undertaking a hobby that requires education and preparation to be safe and is very much misunderstood by the general public. I don’t share your enthusiasm for caving, but I very much support your right to engage in it.

216

Not really IMO. Most people just THINK they follow that belief system that they dont do anything risky that they dont have to. Many people do SOMETHING just a risky as caving, but is under the delusion that it is safe or at least much much safer than caving.

Nobody HAS to smoke. Nobody has to eat at fast food joints all the time and clog up their arteries. Nobody has to play in or around water. Nobody has to ride a horse. Nobody has to drive as much as they do. Nobody has to get way overwieght. And on and on with lifestyle choices and recreational choices. Well, there are some folks that “have” to do these things I imagine, but its fraction of those that do it.

But most everybody hears “caving” and thinks “OMG, your gonna DIE”. With all that other stuff listed above, most of the time the reaction is NOT “OMG your gonna die”.

Is it risk free ? Hell no, but neither are all the things you HAVE to do and plenty of stuff that isnt neccessary that people choose to do every day.

217

Hence why I used the word “perceive”. People perceive certain risks, such as driving a car, to be necessary even when they aren’t. They perceive caving as dangerous even when they know nothing about it.

Personally, I think caving would be dangerous for ME because I don’t know anything about it, and I have claustrophobic tendencies that may make me more likely to panic and do something foolish. I am unusual in that I don’t automatically assume it’s dangerous for other people… but then, my mother-in-law was climbing up and down ropes into and out of caves in her early 60’s without incident. Having known a caver (even if she wasn’t hardcore) probably affects my opinions on the matter. That, and having a “dangerous” hobby of my own. People used to say similar things about my flying - it wasn’t “necessary”, “OMIGOSH! YOU’RE GONNA DIE!” and so forth. This has given me more empathy for other so-called “dangerous” pursuits that I might otherwise have.

218

Caving engages many people’s fears - claustrophobia, darkness, creepy-crawlies.

An incident in which a guy dies head-down wedged into a passage in spite of all attempts to rescue him, even if statistically very unusual, just re-enforces those fears.

Like a guy getting bit by a shark while surfing. It’s rare, and presumably the drive to the beach was more statistically dangerous, but it creates more fear than the more quotidian death by car crash would.

219

I don’t disagree, but is this cave any more dangerous than the “typical” cave?

If it is, that’s one thing. If it isn’t, then it seems like whoever decided to seal it up is making the decision that caving, and by extension anything as or more dangerous than caving, is something that people should not be allowed to do.

Crawling down holes where you might get stuck and die is dangerous. And something I would not choose to do unless chased down the hole by scary clowns. I read Aku-aku by Thor Heyerdahl as a child, and he described some narrow crooked shafts that some tribe would crawl down and hide in when invaded. It gave me the willies.

But if someone else wants to do it, and is aware of the risk, I tend to the libertarian “let him do it, but don’t expect a major rescue attempt if you get stuck, and especially if you get stuck from being stupid”.

And a technical question - if you do get stuck and die, can’t you just go in with a hook and drag the body out in pieces? I don’t imagine they would have an open casket at the funeral anyway, if the guy has been simmering down a hole for a few days. And if they are willing to leave him down there to rot anyway…

Regards,
Shodan