If the teamwork hadn't been there, it would have taken twice the amount of time it did.
A 12-hour rescue mission ultimately succeeded Saturday morning in extracting and airlifting a spelunker who fell 25-30 feet in a cave in Dade County, Ga.
Rescuers were called at 7:45 p.m. Friday to Byers Cave on Fox Mountain, authorities said. They made their way through the cave to find a man who had injuries to his face, arm, shoulder and back, and likely had internal trauma.
The man was conscious when a medical team reached him, but his mental status was altered. That, paired with his other obvious injuries, placed him in critical condition.
Byers CaveShan Anderson, assistant chief of Dade County Mountain Rescue, said the man had been exploring Byers Cave with a small group of people and had somehow stumbled in a large section of the cave that had a pit in the ground.
Rescuers had to navigate multiple extremely tight crawl spaces and several vertical drops, all while rigging an elaborate system to transport the injured man to the surface.
Anderson said there were 30-40 personnel inside the cave and another 15-20 outside, all of whom were organized into teams with specific roles in order to streamline the rescue process. By the end of the operation, teams had rigged three separate vertical haul systems within the cave, as well as a high-line traverse system.
According to Anderson, “The operation went extremely smoothly,” despite the difficulties.
“If the teamwork hadn’t been there, it would have taken twice the amount of time it did,” he said. There were responders from Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Walker County Emergency Services and the South Dade Fire Department, which was the first agency on the scene.
Ted Rumley Jr., a Georgia Forestry ranger, was among those working outside the cave, helping fellow ranger Kerry Phillips build a road to the site for the rescuers. Rumley called the operation the “most elaborate cave rescue we’ve had in Dade county.”
But this rescue was only one of three emergencies in Dade County on Saturday.
A 72-year-old man was clipped by a train while walking to church in the morning, and a woman was involved in a hang-gliding accident near Burkhalter Gap road on Lookout Mountain in the afternoon.
In each incident, the victims were airlifted to the hospital. No information on their conditions was available late Saturday.
Contact Staff Writer Emmett Gienapp ategienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731.