Cave rescue

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Cave rescue is a highly specialized field of rescue in which injured or trapped people are removed from or treated in caves and other underground space (holes). Cave rescue borrows from firefighting, confined space rescue, and rope rescue, but has also developed its own special techniques and skills for performing work in conditions that are almost always difficult and demanding.

It should be noted that cave rescuers are often 'amateurs' (in fact experienced cavers with extra training undertaken under the aegis of their local caving organisations), because the skills used are too specialised and rarely used to be learned by normal emergency personel.

In the United States, the leading cave rescue training curriculum is developed and deployed by the National Cave Rescue Commission^[1] (NCRC), which operates as part of the National Speleological Society (NSS).

[edit] Notable rescues or attempted rescues

Emily Davis Mobley from Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico in 1991. More than seventy people worked over four days to bring her to the surface after her leg was broken.

Floyd Collins in Sand Cave in Kentucky in 1925. Despite heroic efforts, Collins died after a little more than two weeks, less than 150 feet from the surface, his foot trapped by a rock.

Neil Moss in Peak Cavern, England in 1959. Trapped in a narrow tunnel, he was eventually suffocated by carbon dioxide after prolonged efforts to free him.