Cave Diver Completely Lost and Left for Dead underwater, so they called Edd

I'm Woody from Dive Talk and I have the absolute pleasure again to have another riveting story from Ed Sorensen. We're here at Cave Adventurers. I've been doing some training and there's no way I can't interview you when I have that opportunity. So a rare moment is this is about all you're going to hear from me. This is an amazing story Ed was telling me about it. Just set it up in terms of time frame and location and then man wait till you guys hear this. This is unbelievable stuff. So this was 2012 and normally it was at Jackson Blue Springs in Blue Springs in Mariana here and normally Blue Springs pumps out about 160 million gallons of water a day. So there's the flow you've seen it it's quite substantial. Definitely. During 2012 it was all the way down from 160 to 180 million down to less than nine. It was barely flowing at all and there was a team of three guys that had come down from the Midwest and one of my students that had just finished he was full cave but he just finished a sidemount class was looking for a dive partner. These guys let him go out with them to twin and hole in the wall. The next day they're all going to go to Jackson Blue. They're going to do a specific jump. I don't think they were real familiar with the system and they ended up taking the wrong jump. It was sidemount only and the lead two divers were in back mount. The third diver of that group was in sidemount and then my student was in fourth position also in sidemount. They go in it's big enough they turn it starts getting smaller. They knew that this jump had a couple of restrictions but these were way worse than they thought. The lead diver gets stuck and there's very little flow in there a lot of clay and he's trying to get through thinking that it's going to come around and it's just getting worse and worse. He pops through that restriction gets ahead of the silt cloud only to find another restriction up there so he's trying to get through that. The second diver is now stuck in a restriction that he just cleared and it's just getting worse and worse and worse. Now my student last one in by that time it's clear back to him and he tugs on the guy in front of him and says I'm out of here. So he turns the next sidemount diver he's trying to signal his buddy who just popped through the restriction and now he can't reach him can't see him it's zero biz. So he turns and exits by this time the lead diver is now up to his third restriction still fighting and kicking his way through it's just getting worse and worse by this time it's spreading throughout the whole system and then the second diver when he gets through the second nasty restriction and he's now trying to follow the line it's zero biz he can't find his buddy in front of him he turns and decides he's out of there now he's stuck in the restriction going the other way and by the time he got out the three of them all got together by main line they'd follow their jump line back to the gold line and now the main tunnel is four or five foot visibility and it's getting worse and worse by the minute. So they think well this comes out up here further so they go up put in a reel and start going but they don't know where they're at because by this time now the whole cave ---- out and it's just zero biz. So they're just going around and now they're bumping into each other now they're tangling each other up in their lines and they decide we got to get out of here. So they looked as long as they could and still have enough gas for their exit. So one of them now they're trying to decide what to do and they're trying to communicate with wet notes and the one guy says he's gonna stay and look and the other two are gonna exit. So they exit and as soon as they exit they yell to a guy that's suiting up at the pavilion you know call Ed we need him here now. So they called the shop and I was sitting here having a meeting with Bobby Franklin from Underwater Light Dude and Frank comes running down the stairs lost diver lost diver lost diver so we start heading to the park. Bobby wants to go in with me. I told him I don't take anybody on a rescue or recovery. He wants to help so I said you can stay in the cavern and when I bring the body up you can take it out to the sheriff's department while I decompress. Because in your mind at that point it was going to be a body at least that's what you yeah they had been there so long that they barely had enough gas to get out okay and it's another over a half an hour from the time I get the call till I'm suited up and in the water which was an amazing time due to my guys being you know right on the spot and they're getting all my stuff together tanks regulators and everything while I'm putting a dry suit on so I got in the water really fast but I'm pretty sure it's a body recovery so I go in they tell me where there's a jump line to where they were I go in I scooter into there and soon as I'm in the cavern and it's maybe seven eight foot visibility as soon as I'm dropping down the chimney it's getting worse soon as I get to the bottom I can barely see past the end of my scooter so I'm just scootering right alongside the gold line and I almost ran into their jump line so I swam the scooter up to the jump clipped it off and started going in and it's complete zero in there and I'm just feeling around now when you get right up next to the ceiling sometimes you can have a couple of inches of visibility sometimes a foot sometimes you might be able to see 18 inches and anything's better than nothing because usually when somebody runs out of gas they're floating and so it's an easy way to find them I'm searching this tunnel all by hand I gotta hold the line to go all the way over here into wedgie spots in case he's stuck somewhere over here up here and I do this throughout the entire jump when I get to the end of the jump line through all the restrictions now there's no more line so I get a safety reel out and I start doing a grid search pattern and it's all by feel and every so often I'll stop and just listen I'm listening for any kind of a banging on a tank even if they're just breathing usually I can hear somebody breathing 20 or 30 feet away okay and I hear nothing and I just keep going and it's taking quite a while I mean you can't see right I can't see everything is just going slow by feel I've got to feel floor to ceiling floor to ceiling now in the really muddy parts I'm not doing the biz any good either but zero zero so um at a certain point something just told me you passed him and I don't know what why or how and I just start turning around some sometimes I think I on these you know some of these have you know multiple rescues I've done it's almost if it's not divine intervention I don't know what it is because instinct some people say oh you're just lucky maybe but I think um who knows I like that somebody tells me something tells me you passed him turn around so I'm going back and I get up there by the ceiling and I'm looking around I searched some more I get up by the ceiling and the ceiling kind of disappears and I can see some clear water over here so I get up there and now I can see four or five feet in some places 18 inches others and then up here I see just a wall of brown and I'm like oh ---- he's up there and I know that there's a really nasty crevice up there and it just kind of goes along and it opens up in one spot about this big that's the only place he could have gotten through in doubles there's a line supposed to be there and it isn't there I can't find it I get up there I find the crack and I'm trying to figure out where I can fit through and I've got my reel in my hand and I'm feeling this and I just know if there's a panic diver on the other side of this crack he's going to tear my head off when I come up through there and I and I stopped and I listened for a minute I don't hear anything I go up through this crevice and as I'm going up I'm now getting sometimes zero sometimes eight nine ten inches of this and do you know about how long do you think at that point he's been up there just to give reference no I don't when I when I got him out which will probably be 20 minutes from now in the story 15 minutes from now yeah he had a 60 foot stop on his computer and it said at that time he'd been in there pretty close to four hours on just a set of doubles wow so and we're talking 90 VD yeah so I'm coming up through this crevice and I'm listening and all of a sudden I see this little teeny blue dot and I thought that's got to be his light so I start heading for it and as I'm going up I am now seeing a really browned out couple of you know maybe a foot and I see the silhouette of two legs hanging down perfectly motionless with a light hanging down right next to it that should be on his hand perfectly motionless and that's his 21 watt HID so I think to myself okay I got a bot and as I get right there I reach for his leg to pull him down and about that time I exhaled and I'm looking up and I see him look down at me and I'm like ---- he's alive so I whip my long hose regulator out now when I started this dive just on the premise it may be a rescue I started on my left short hose cylinder I've been on my left short hose cylinder this entire time I'm on two high pressure 100s that's all I got okay and I have no idea how long I've been in there I haven't seen my pressure gauges since the cavern I don't know how low this bottle is getting but I whip my long nose off and I can't get up to where his head is and he's found a little air pocket it was about maybe two feet across maybe a little bit and in the middle it was kind of shaped like this in the middle was only about this tall so he had his head up in there the only spot he could get where his mouth was out of the water because his tanks were empty and so he's stuck in this one position he can't move without closing his mouth and not breathing and who knows what he's breathing I mean exactly and this air pocket is small and for as long as I don't know how long he's been out of gas at this point I just know I can't believe he's still alive so I can't get to him so I'm holding this regulator with my left hand up in this air pocket and my hand kind of disappears here and I'm thinking he's not taking it is he dead and I just imagined him looking at me because it was pretty bad days right and I'm sitting there doing this so I get up there and where I can get my head to it's only about this tall so I'm looking at him through one eyeball and I can see it looks like he's alive but he's facing this way and I'm over here and now I need to talk to him but it's only this tall so I have to put my lips I take my regulator out put my lips almost up to the rocks and I'm like are you okay and I'm looking at him and he's like I'm okay and he's completely almost comatose and so now I got to turn again and I said can you do me a favor can you put this in your mouth and I'm still doing this and he goes okay and he puts it in his mouth so now I'm back and I'm trying to tread water with my lips you know an inch from the surface from the ceiling the rocks and talk to him and water keeps dumping down my throat and I'm telling him I'm going to get you out I'm not going to leave you here but it's going to be really bad I need you to stay calm because the worst thing you can have is him panic and kill me too and so I'm explaining to him how bad it is how there's a little teeny crack the lines missing and there's only one spot you can fit through and I got to find it so I told him I'm going to put you behind me hanging onto my ankle and I need you to stay calm and he said okay so we get going and soon as we drop out of this air pocket you know he's on my regulator he can't see and he's squeezing the life out of my leg that's his life now I got my reel and I'm reeling up but it's line trapped and so I'm just sitting there trying to hold this reel find this crevice and it's just about 10 inches wide eight inches wide and it just goes like this and I'm feeling like okay it's got to be right up here it's got to be right up here and we get to a rock pile oh ---- I missed it now I got to figure out how do I turn hit both of us around so I actually drop down through the crevice because I can fit he can't he's still on my leg now I'm hanging upside down and he's holding up and I'm trying to do this gymnastic maneuver and now I got to get him off my leg so I actually have to swing around bit in half and I pulled him off my leg and I put him on my wrist okay so now I'm trying to back him up in zero visibility and this is not going well and the whole time I'm thinking how much gas do I have left I'm trying not to breathe right but now I'm working fairly hard yeah and I can hear him just and I'm thinking holy ---- are we gonna have enough gas for this and I finally find the crack and I can't get him to come head down for some reason he would not go head down and obviously we're in the water I can't talk to him so he was just and I'm like come on you're okay come on you're okay which sounds you know so who knows what he's hearing okay who knows what he's comprehending because he's so out of it he's got so much hypercapnia and from carbon dioxide he's got so much hypoxia from lack of oxygen so finally I realized I can't force him down this hole so now I have to walk him past the hole now I have to pull my hand out from under his hand now he's probably thinking he's leaving me to die and I grabbed his feet and I had to pull him down through the crack and as he's coming down he's just on me and I'm just kind of protecting my mask and I'm trying to reassure him I got you I got you I got you you're okay and that matters right that human contact is so important and when I pulled my hand away from him you I can just imagine how panic-stricken he was and I just could not have him panic and kill me and luckily I think he was so co2ed out that he kept fairly calm but now we're going now my line goes to the end of that passage I know the gold line is about 50 feet that way but I don't know where exactly so I get another safety out tie into my reel and then I start going that way and all of a sudden he's pulling me back and I'm like oh come I don't have time or gas for this and I'm like are you okay are you okay and by this time we've got sometimes two three four or five inches of visibility and he grabs my hand and he puts it over here on his right post and his long hose was seven feet that way stuck between two rocks now I've got to go back get his regulator out from the rock put it around his neck and we finally get to the gold line and I still can't see my gauges and I mean I've got a couple inches of visibility I'm trying to see that just keep going keep going and as we start up the chimney I start getting into a little bit better biz I can see all right I've you know I've got a couple hundred psi left in my tank and he's probably got you know another hundred on top of that on this tank I'm like okay maybe we make it and that's when I checked his computer it says he's got a two minute 60 foot stop and I'm like oh geez we need to get we need to go and at this point I'm only a couple hundred feet from safety bottle and about that time Bobby Franklin's swimming around in the cavern and he sees my life so he comes swimming over and it's still near zero visibility and he's going give me the body and about that time he sees the guy breathe and he's like yes so he's asking me you know what what can I do and I'm like I'm okay so I told him go get my scooter so I left him a wet note and off he went we get going and when we get to where he had tied where their team had tied the reel in that's where they left their auction bottles which I don't recommend anybody that's 45 feet deep auction bottles can't anybody's below 20 feet but that's where he had it okay so I clipped it on him and he's trying to switch to it and I'm like no no no no no I get him up into the cavern and I said now switch and I'm sitting there with him on this shelf and he's not looking at me he's just looking straight ahead and he's still barely with it we're sitting there for probably 10 minutes or so when all of a sudden I see him getting real fidgety and he's got these big eyes and he's looking all around and I'm like are you okay and he just keeps he's not looking at me but I can see he's about ready to panic again I'm like what's going on and I grab his gauge he's got zero gas and he's now running out of gas for the second time so I grabbed my regulator out of my auction bottle I hand it to him and I get him on auction and I've still got decompression to do so I told him wait right here and I swam out told by this time there's hundreds of paramedics cops ambulance firemen back by standards they've got body a body bag stretched out his friends are there and I said give me an oxygen bottle give me an oxygen bottle and like 30 oxygen bottles come flying at me I go back in I'm sitting with him and when I brought him out he was barely with it but enough to answer and yes or no questions to the paramedics and the sheriff's department and stuff so it was it was a really good day that we actually got to bring another one home absolutely um just a couple questions come to mind that I can't help number one did he ever give you the oh my I mean you literally saved my life a hundred percent he dies if you don't get him I would be like you that's it I mean if Ed doesn't get him it's over did he give you that he never later or something like that at the time he was I think still very hypoxic even though he was been on pure oxygen he was really out of it confused and he's getting bombarded with questions from the paramedics the sheriff's department bystanders his friends everybody's trying to the paramedics are trying to keep people back okay and then overwhelming to form at that point my guys were there and they were helping him get out of his gear and we got him out of the water then I started gearing down I went by to check on him before I started taking my dry suit off and the paramedics were busy and I thought let's let them do their thing we just packed up and left later on when he came back to the shop he was not talking to anybody really his buddies were talking a lot he wasn't talking much at all and then his phone rang and it was his wife apparently he's supposed to call when he gets out of each and every dive and all I heard as he was walking away was yeah honey the dive went longer than expected I'll call you back obviously you want to say now later on I think they left the next day about six months later he came back I got a call from the shop I was at the park and they said you know he's on his way to the park he wants to see you he gave me a big hug thanked me said I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you so it was nice yeah and I think the final thing I want to say is that these are unbelievable remarkable life-saving things that you're doing and there's no real fanfare there's no real press it's not like other at the Thai rescue you know it's just it's just for you knowing you can do that like and I think is that what drives you I mean do you do you say to yourself I've I've got this duty because I can do it and there is nobody else that can do it like I'm just what's in your head with that um well I've never done any of this for thanks um when the IUCR was first formed in 1998 or 99 I was asked to be a part of it I was living in Oregon so um there was two of us Jeff Law and myself he was asked to be the regional coordinator for Oregon Washington and Idaho because there wasn't very many cave divers back then um not like it is now I think there was only like three cave divers in the state of Oregon at that time okay wow so we were supposed to be over Oregon Washington and Idaho um and we were told we could never ask for money this was a volunteer thing if you want to be a part of it you know you're welcome if you don't you don't um and um I did my first recovery I think well I was on vacation um in 1999 um and it's everything happened so fast that um you know by the time the the victim's taken away by the ambulance um and then all the incident reports are done and everything usually everybody's gone um I don't think I saw the husband of that victim uh for years um and he never rotted up I'm sure as heck not gonna um when I did my first well the first rescue I ever got called out for was in 2006 and when I got to him uh the the the buddy had said he was uh trapped but had gas when I got to him of course he was deceased I got him out I had to go back in he had dumped his tanks and when I went back it had been an hour transposed by that time or transpired so I had a couple inches of visibility he still had 2,500 psi in his tanks had he not panicked and ditched his tanks I'd have got I'd have had a rescue to him too but um when I did the first rescue um the news said it was amazing incredible there had been so few in history blah blah blah and a lot of the cave divers uh oh well that's nothing oh he got lucky and I don't know there's a lot of that um in the cave community more than I'd like to see but you know hey if somebody does something great I'm all for it um but it was you know maybe I was lucky maybe it was a miracle maybe who knows what it was then the second one happened then the third then the now we're up to six I mean I'm either either really lucky or I have the right intervention or I'm at the right I don't know well then then I said it was my final question but now because you said that are you gonna train somebody I mean there will be a day I hope it's 50 years from now but at some point are you thinking I want to try to is there any training in your brain that you think I have a person maybe I could start showing how I go about the thinking or the process of doing this well you know on one hand when I look back at what training did I get Henry Nicholson the founder of the IGCRR our entire training was paperwork this is an incident report it's not an accident it's an incident this is how we fill it out the sheriff's department's in charge we're just a vehicle to get them out for them it's it's always considered a crime scene until it's been cleared that it's not and this is how we do things nobody ever taught me anything on how to do the recovery Lamar Hires and John Jones do all the IUCRR training at one time John said that him and Lamar were you know thinking about quote you know bringing somebody else in asked me if I would do it I said I would but after one of the after that extraction in the Dominican I actually talked to Lamar in great detail and I said you know I'm 62 years old now I said you know I can't be traveling all over the world we got it we got to have something so him and I talked about it exactly but then it went away I actually talked about it with Dean my head instructor at one point about hey what if we have a class because now that remember back in the 90s there was very very very few people sidemounting at all it was a taboo it was a job specific tool and now that sidemount is the prevalent form of diving people are going into smaller and smaller places and you know the Dominican Republic thing they had 16 or 18 experts over there and then before they called me and there's a need for it there definitely is we've talked about it we haven't done it but as far as you know it's just like the the rescue of Josh up there when they're they've got the whole site closed down they're not letting the UK divers dive for their friends and they said we're waiting for an expert out of Florida so all these people are waiting for an expert out of Florida when I show up they rush me into this mobile command center and they said okay now they're thinking the savior is here here's our expert what's your plan and they're all looking at me they want to hear this plan so badly from the expert and I said I don't have a plan and I see this look of despair and shock and they go oh what do you mean you don't have a plan they said I've been doing this for 25 years every one of them's different so I go in I see what I see and they're like well how long should I've gonna be I don't know I'm like what do you mean you don't know I'm like I'll go till I get it done are you gonna use airline you're gonna run your own line I don't know and they're probably thinking does this guy know anything are we sure he's an expert but it makes sense I mean everyone so different it's all instinct when I came up with the first recovery harness yeah to get them through tight restrictions when I took Mike over the Dominican I'm showing him this and he's like how did you come up with this I needed it at the time and it just came to me so I don't know how to teach instinct to people we can teach them the different harnesses I can make them for them I can teach them the why behind how they were developed I can teach them why in one scenario you might need to pull them backwards feet first and use this harness why you might need to pull them this way so you don't pull their arms up but you just can't teach instinct so yeah but if we get some divers trained in extreme small confined space recovery then maybe the rest will come yeah hopefully we can um thank you as always pleasure thanks for having me bye people Ed Sorensen everybody thank you thanks for watching bye