Weybridge Cave Rescue,
Weybridge VT, 8/6/2013
At about 17:30 on Tuesday,
August 6, two 20-something men entered Weybridge Cave without ropes or harnesses, passing
through about 120 feet of passage, including the narrow, sloped entrance side
crawl, the 15 ft. nuisance drop and the 40 ft. drop into the main chamber.
On exiting, one fell
free-climbing on the 40 ft. drop, and fell approximately 15 feet onto his feet and
tailbone. He had a small head laceration, a broken ankle and could not feel or
move his lower extremities.
His buddy climbed out and
called 911 at approximately 19:00. The dispatcher notified Weybridge Fire
Department and offered to notify Vermont Cave Rescue, but it was an
unrecognized asset and the FD responded to the scene to assess the situation.
Upon arrival at the mouth of
the cave, which is at the bottom of a 30 ft. depression in the woods and has an
opening of less than 3 ft. diameter, the Chief realized that this was beyond the
capabilities and training of his department. He had dispatch call out
Middlebury Technical Rescue, New Haven Technical Rescue, Middlebury EMS, the
VT Cave Rescue Network and Northern NY Life Flight out of Saranac Lake.
Cave Entrance
The VT Cave Rescue contact
person, Steve Hazelton, called Scott Supernaw to respond, packed his gear,
notified Rutland Regional Ambulance to ready the cave rescue cache, and then
had his wife make the phone tree calls to the nearest and most proficient
cavers.
I was called at 19:45 and
said I would pack up and head out with an ETA of 21:15 - 21:45, but that I would
probably not go underground.
I responded at 20:35 and
arrived (after wasting time trying to find Cave Road) at about 22:00.
By that time, Steve Hazelton,
who had also planned to take an above-ground command position, was underground
with the patient and a hard-wired field phone, with another at the cave mouth
and a third at the staging area in a corn field. Peter Grant, 76 years old and
caving most of his life, was the first to arrive and tied off a dynamic rope to
a dead tree at the mouth and entered to assess the patient. A couple other
cavers were also below the 40' drop and a high four-cam anchor was established
a few feet back from the nuisance drop.
Technical Rescue re-rigged
the rope's anchor to a more secure tree, and set up a 600' haul line and a 300'
belay line into the cave, anchored well back to secure trees with room for the
haul and belay teams.
Scott Supernaw, assuming
staging command, phoned into the cave and Rick Pingree, on commo duty at the
patient, got Steve Hazelton on the phone, who advised that I was needed to rig
the nuisance drop, since I was one of the four who had done a rescue preplan
for this cave ten years earlier.
I suited up and entered the cave
to the first drop, where Peter Gillette was stationed, lowering gear to the cavers
below. I assessed the four-point high anchor, which was loaded on only two very
small cams on one side of a vertical rock protrusion from the ceiling, while
the two small cams on the other side of the same rock were unloaded and would
have received a shock load after failure of the primary anchors, which might
have shifted the rock and dislodged it from the ceiling over the heads of Peter
and myself and potentially falling down the 15' drop onto cavers below.
I re-rigged the high anchor
so that all four cams were sharing the load, then investigated another high
directional anchor point over the drop. I exited the cave to retrieve my
artificial rock anchors and returned with what turned out to be perfect for the
application: a #4 Camelot and a #5 Tricam, equalized to each other with the
Tricam above and slightly to the right of the SLCD as backup.
The Sked and OSS as well as
patient packaging material were already in the cave upon my entrance, and
additional vertical cavers arrived to assist with patient packaging, rigging
and passage modification.
We had known that there were
two pinches, one at each vertical drop, that would be impossible to move an
immobilized patient through, with as little as 12"-14" clearance in
one dimension.
Technical Rescue sent in an
air chisel modified to run off of SCBA air bottles, and fire fighters began to
shuttle in air bottles to the nuisance drop, where Peter and I lowered them to
cavers below.
The 40' drop required the
most extensive modification, as the pinch was both narrow and S-shaped. The
nuisance drop also had a narrow slot that had to be enlarged, and most of that
was done with sledge hammer. All told, twenty-five 2215 psi air bottles were
moved in and out of the cave, each one lasting about 3 minutes in use.
Main Drop
By this time, additional cave
rescue resources had arrived from New York state, as much as five hours away,
including National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC) instructors who checked and approved our rigging and patient
packaging.
The in-cave rigging team used
the main haul line as a static anchor and rigged a 4:1 jigger and belay line to
move the patient in segments of about 10' up the main drop, with three resets
of the jigger. The extrication began probably about 03:30 and the patient was
moved through the walking passage to the nuisance drop by about 05:00.
I passed the main haul line
through a pulley at my high directional, and we were able to use a relay voice
communication to the above-ground haul and belay teams to bring the patient up
the drop. I had the outside teams tension the belay and slacken the haul line
so that I could remove the haul line from the high pulley, and we were able to
manhandle the patient over the lip to the one flat area large enough for the
Sked-wrapped body.
Given the extreme narrowness
of the entrance tunnel, the patient had to be rotated on his uninjured side,
but it was nearly impossible for head and toe attendants to lift the litter
while moving their own bodies to the entrance hole. We attempted using hand
tethers to litter handles on one side of the Sked but there was insufficient
leverage.
Each movement was painful for
the patient, who was experiencing extreme tenderness at the sacrum, and we had
to move him backwards to the level area after getting him jammed in the narrow
passage.
I passed the air chisel over
the patient and, with a plastic shield on his face for protection, the head
attendant broke away the one large sidewall protrusion that was preventing
forward movement.
I suggested rigging a
tensioned trolley line to the entrance and, after a little experimenting we
decided to do that, sending one end of a 7/16" static line that we had
used to lower gear out to the mouth to be tensioned with a Z-rig, while I
clipped the bitter end to the four-cam multi-point distributing anchor at the passage ceiling.
With two trolley pulleys, one for each
end of the litter, we were still not able to get enough leverage to get
sufficient weight off the rough cobbled tunnel floor. But, once we put the haul
line through another pulley on the trolley line, each haul helped raise the
patient and we were able to move him by inches and feet in a slow and tortuous
movement to the surface.
The patient was sometimes
screaming in pain, but exhibited inordinate patience as we modified, and rigged
and inched him outward.
The patient was successfully extricated
06:30 on 8/7/2013, in daylight, after 12 hours on his back in the cave, and carried
up to the staging area where EMS assessed and repackaged him on a backboard.
The patient was transported by pickup truck and ambulance at 07:00. Cleanup and
gear swap concluded at 08:00.
Sked & Patient Packaging
The flight medic with Life
Flight had left after perhaps four hours, but noted that this was one of the
most organized rescues he's ever seen.
Several dozen participants
reconvened on Monday, August 12 at the Weybridge Fire Station for an incident
debrief and critique. Opportunities for improvement were noted, but all agreed
it was a well-performed and – eventually – successful operation.
Followup:
On the weekend of September 28-29, an NCRC (National Cave Rescue Commission) OCR (Orientation to Cave Rescue) workshop was held at the Middlebury Fire House for Middlebury, Weybridge and New Haven emergency fire and EMS personnel and local cavers for an in-depth introduction to the organizational, logistical, environmental and technical knowledge and skill sets necessary for a typical Northeast cave rescue.
Though the standard OCR curriculum covers only horizontal cave extractions, we had the luxury of using the new rope tower on the front of the fire station to demonstrate and practice vertical rope skills, including ascending, descending and "hot" changeovers while on rope.
We also used the Weybridge Cave, with its two vertical sections, for a series of in-cave exercises on Sunday, including anchoring an in-cave 3:1 Z-rig to raise a tired caver up the 40' drop, and setting up a tensioned trolley line to move a dummy packaged in the Sked from the top of the nuisance drop to the surface.
The exercises gave all participants an opportunity to get into the cave, practice vertical technique in the uniquely challenging cave environment, and refine the extrication systems we used for the August rescue.
The twenty participants and six instructors agreed in a concluding debriefing that the weekend left us all more confident for the next inevitable rescue, both in technical capabilities and in the improved working relationships between emergency and caver resources.
Artificial Protection
After the conventional OCR training program on Saturday, I offered an optional session on placing and equalizing artificial rock-climbing protection, since the Weybridge Cave required building an anchor where no reliable natural anchors - such as horns, chockstones or eyes - were available. And that anchor, at the top of the nuisance drop, had to serve triple duty: as rappel rope anchor, high directional pulley for the haul system, and tensioned trolley line anchor.
I gave a PowePoint presentation on the history of artificial protection devices, the types of "pro", their proper placement, and the several methods of creating both self-equalizing multi-point anchors and focused load-distributing multi-point anchors which are more suitable to static rescue systems.
Followup:
On the weekend of September 28-29, an NCRC (National Cave Rescue Commission) OCR (Orientation to Cave Rescue) workshop was held at the Middlebury Fire House for Middlebury, Weybridge and New Haven emergency fire and EMS personnel and local cavers for an in-depth introduction to the organizational, logistical, environmental and technical knowledge and skill sets necessary for a typical Northeast cave rescue.
Though the standard OCR curriculum covers only horizontal cave extractions, we had the luxury of using the new rope tower on the front of the fire station to demonstrate and practice vertical rope skills, including ascending, descending and "hot" changeovers while on rope.
We also used the Weybridge Cave, with its two vertical sections, for a series of in-cave exercises on Sunday, including anchoring an in-cave 3:1 Z-rig to raise a tired caver up the 40' drop, and setting up a tensioned trolley line to move a dummy packaged in the Sked from the top of the nuisance drop to the surface.
The exercises gave all participants an opportunity to get into the cave, practice vertical technique in the uniquely challenging cave environment, and refine the extrication systems we used for the August rescue.
The twenty participants and six instructors agreed in a concluding debriefing that the weekend left us all more confident for the next inevitable rescue, both in technical capabilities and in the improved working relationships between emergency and caver resources.
Artificial Protection
After the conventional OCR training program on Saturday, I offered an optional session on placing and equalizing artificial rock-climbing protection, since the Weybridge Cave required building an anchor where no reliable natural anchors - such as horns, chockstones or eyes - were available. And that anchor, at the top of the nuisance drop, had to serve triple duty: as rappel rope anchor, high directional pulley for the haul system, and tensioned trolley line anchor.
Nuisance drop high-point anchor
#3 Big Bro, #3.5 Camalot, #6 Tricam
Munter-mule for high directional pulley
I gave a PowePoint presentation on the history of artificial protection devices, the types of "pro", their proper placement, and the several methods of creating both self-equalizing multi-point anchors and focused load-distributing multi-point anchors which are more suitable to static rescue systems.
Then I offered participants a chance to try out "pro" and equalizing systems on my home-made rock board.
