by birky » Aug 14, 2011 2:50 pm
The last entry has it almost right. There were three experienced cavers, not two: me, Tom Arnold, and Rick Moreland (who was my brother-in-law). Tom brought a high school student with no prior experience. We split into two pairs to check out two possible entrances to caves before meeting at Show Farm Cave. The high schooler and I finished our very short cave first, then explored Show Farm through walking passage to a crawlway. We returned to the surface and met Tom and Rick, who wanted to see it for themselves. The high schooler remained at the entrance to meet them on the way out while I hiked back to the car to change clothes. Then the rain came and the student came to tell me the stream was rising at the entrance. I went back to the cave and entered during a lull in the rain; the entrance was about 5 feet high and had over 3 feet of water, then it opened up to stream passage averaging about 15 feet high. I hiked downstream for several hundred yards, past a deep section partially dammed by debris, until the water was up to my chest behind a second dam. It was clearly too dangerous to pass the second dam and in fact too dangerous to remain in the cave longer as the water was rising slowly, so I left. I knew that Tom and Rick were probably trapped beyond the crawlway so I initiated the rescue operations by calling several other Bloomington cavers, who called others and so on. I also notified the police and Tom's and Rick's families.
Dick Powell and I and a few other experienced cavers coordinated the rescue efforts and worked with the police, who had little knowledge or experience for this kind of thing.
I didn't realize that one of the astronauts was from a nearby town and so didn't connect the onslaught of press to that event until I read the posting. Incidentally, the press got in the way and behaved very badly: the Red Cross brought food and drinks for the rescuers but the press descended on the food like locusts and left very little for us. I didn't know the police were helicoptering the press to the cave. They did transport cavers between the farmhouse where the owner's (the Shauls) kindly let me and some others rest.
The cave flooded completely, as the post said. Police divers attempted to enter but could not go far. The 10-20 cavers made repeated trips into the cave in groups of three after the water receded and the crawlway was passable. We laid phone line into the cave so that cavers could be notified if more rain was on the way. I and two others took the line into a section where the water was chest-deep which chilled us so we had to leave the cave. We were fortunate; the next group discovered the bodies.