German safe after 11-day cave ordeal
Print Edition
RESCUERS hoisted a seriously injured German caver to safety yesterday, ending an 11-day ordeal trapped in Germany’s deepest and longest cave after a dramatic recovery operation.
A multi-national team of hundreds of emergency personnel had battled around the clock in a complex and costly operation to rescue the stricken man.
“The victim has been brought to the surface and is receiving emergency medical care,” a mountain rescue official said after the team reached the mouth of the cave in the Bavarian Alps, where a helicopter was waiting to take him to hospital.
Explorer Johann Westhauser, 52, suffered serious head injuries in an accident about 1,000 meters below ground in the labyrinth-like Riesending cave complex on June 8.
“It was one of the most difficult rescue operations in the history of the mountain rescue service,” said Klemens Reindl, who runs the service and who supervised the operation.
“Especially, the international character of the mission was remarkable,” he said in a statement, adding that 728 people from five countries took part.
Rescuers placed Westhauser on a fiberglass stretcher and negotiated a treacherous network of tunnels and chambers, underground lakes and ice-cold waterfalls. The rescue operation involved rest periods in five bivouac stops, followed by a major final hoist up a 180-meter vertical shaft near the entrance to the cave, officials said.
The rescue effort, high in the mountains near the Austrian border, has involved professional cavers, medical personnel and helicopter crews, from Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Croatia.
Veteran caver Westhauser, of the Technology Institute of Karlsruhe, was exploring the cave system with two others when he suffered head and chest injuries in the rock fall.
One of his companions made the more than 10-hour trip back to the surface to raise the alarm while the other stayed behind.
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