by elfish » Nov 28, 2009 10:58 pm
This is similar a situation that happened here Colorado in the early 1980's. A well liked and accomplished caver, Bruce Unger, was killed while trying to make a through trip in a stream cave in the Lost Creek Wilderness. After the death, the cavers tried to remove the body, but it was wedged tight in a crack in the stream, so they decided to leave it in the cave. The caving community supported this idea and some of the family supported it too, however as time went on, the decision became more difficult to maintain. Some family members felt unresolved having the body left in the cave. At the same time, when the Water Board found out it was in the stream, they demanded it be removed.
Part of the difficulty was that getting the body out would require applying a lot of force to the body. The cave rescuers were friends of the victim and were not emotionally equipped to handle the body roughly to get it out. The solution was using a caver who was an MD Doctor to supervise the extraction. Doctors are used to handling bodies and are not as squeamish as ordinary people The body was successfully removed by winching it out with rope.
Having witnessed some of the events, I think it is a bad idea to leave a body in a cave for several reasons:
1. Leaving the body doesn't allow the family closure. In the case of the Colorado death, at least one family member said she'd never be resolved until the body was removed. Dealing with a unexpected death is hard enough, but having the body in a wild cave, marginally protected from vandals and vermin makes it even more difficult to resolve the loss.
2. Closing a cave is difficult even when there is no body. People always want to get into closed caves. Most gated caves get breached from time to time. As time passes and the tragedy is forgotten, there will be more and attempts to break in. Unless you fill the whole cave to the ceiling with concrete, it will eventually succeed.
3. Having a body in the cave will make it even more attractive to thrill seekers. If I remember right, Floyd Collin's body was kept in Crystal Cave for years and the body was frequently stolen and vandalized. Helen Hunt Jackson used be buried in the foothills outside Colorado Springs, but they eventually moved her to a cemetery because her body was periodically stolen. Similar problems have occurred with Buffalo Bill Cody and President Lincoln.
4. I think it sets a bad precedent. Most caves are dangerous enough that it is not uncommon for people to die in them. If you start leaving bodies and closing caves, we will have many closed caves serving as mausoleums for deceased cavers.
Some people are making a comparison to the Utah mine where miners had been killed and they chose to leave the bodies because of the danger to rescuers. However, mines are inheritly unstable and dangerous whereas caves are not. Considering that this cave has been visited by thousands of people, there is nothing to suggest it is inheritly dangerous. It does appear that one or two passages are dangerous, but you could solve that problem by blocking or widening those specific passages. It should be fairly easy to widen the passage using modern mining techniques. At the same time widening the passage would allow easy and safe body removal.
Wanting to close the cave and leave the body, is understandable as a tribute to the person, but it is just asking for long-term problems.