DCRO Practice in Masson Cavern

Karen and I took part in a DCRO rescue practice in Masson Cavern near Matlock.

The scenario was that a number of cavers, maybe 4 or 5, had gone caving yesterday in Masson Cavern and had been missed this morning at breakfast time.

We were split into groups of 4 with a Leader in each group and with Keith J acting as Underground Controller and Lee L organising the exercise. I was leading one of these groups with Brian W, and two Emmas.

I found the first casualty (Andy B) who had “lower leg injury possibly a fracture”. After checking over the casualty I set up the Heyphone we were carrying to report to base but it was not successfully communicating.

Brian and Emma were sent to search nearby. Soon afterwards they found a second casualty (Alan B) who had been separated from his caving mates and suffered light failure and was a bit cold.

I left the other Emma with Andy and followed Brian to check on the second casualty. As he only required spare batteries and was a bit cold, I asked Brian and Emma to escort Alan to the surface.

Meanwhile another group including Steve K arrived and I asked them to search for the third casualty. Both Andy and Alan were sure they were part of a group of three and there were no others on their caving trip. Andy had pointed out the passage where he had come from and last seen the third number of his party, named Marcus. So I asked Steve and the others to head in that direction.

Meanwhile I followed Steve shortly afterwards via a hands and knees crawl and heard voices beyond a short squeeze, Steve had found the third casualty in a dead-end chamber the other side. Again he had “lower leg injuries with possible fractured ankle”.

Other DCRO members had in the meantime got Andy packaged in a stretcher and began heading towards the exit. I found Keith where we had decided to set up the main comms point in a chamber with multiple junctions and brought him up to date.

Returning to where Marcus was located, I followed through the squeeze to find a group of 8 or so DCRO members with Clare H sorting out splints and Dave O sorting out gardening the squeeze and guiding Marcus through as there was no way to get a stretcher through the squeeze.

We got Marcus through and Keith Joule and ourselves decided to agree that Marcus could get through the short hands-and-knees crawl towards the chamber where we had found Andy by shuffling along backwards on his bum, which he did. I went in font crawling backwards moving small rocks out of the way.

At the chamber, Lee asked if we could load Marcus in a stretcher, a Neil Robertson, for the purposes of the exercise and we proceeded to so this and then evacuate Marcus. Once the time had reached the agreed exercise finish of 15:30, we let Marcus out of the stretcher and began making our way out.

At a wet chamber near the entrance with a small stream and pool, we caught up with the other stretcher at the short slippery slope and after they had managed to get Andy up this slope, Lee asked them to also pack up the exercise and start heading out.

We started moving tackle bags towards the exit and then made our way up the short awkward climb to daylight.