No injured cavers recorded.
On Sunday morning, March 27, Doug Beckerdite (20), Gary Blades (20), Ed Brown (20) and Wayne Smith (18) entered Indian Creek Caverns, in Stone County about 40 miles south of Springfield, Missouri. They were in- experienced cavers equipped with flashlights and one electric headlamp. A note was left on their pickup truck giving the phone number of Ed Brown's father. A torrential rain had begun to fall Saturday night. This continued until dawn Monday yielding a total of seven inches of rain. When the four failed to return on Sunday evening, the Stone County Sheriff's Office was called. They instituted a search of the area around the cave and determined that the boys were still in the cave. At 5:00 p.m. on Monday, Dave Neff, a caver and former advisor to the School of the Ozarks Troglophiles, was called. He quickly organized a group of rescuers including an Emergency Medical Technician. At the cave entrance, a half- mile from the road, they formed two search parties. The first entered the cave at 8:00 a.m. and visited the dry upper levels. The second party waited for the arrival of wetsuits for a search of the stream level. The first group soon met with chest deep water with a six inch air space and further on had to swim. Three members of the group turned back at the water and the other three continued. The water level in the cave was some five feet above normal and few could remember when the cave had last flooded like this. The rescuers were hoping that the four would be sit- ting out the flood in the dry upper levels. At 9:00 a.m., only 390 feet from the entrance and shortly before the junction where the upper level began, however, the four overdue cavers were found. They were lying together in about 2 1/2 feet of water, dead. With the arrival of wetsuits, the bodies were removed, all being out of the cave by 11:30 a.m. The county coroner assigned drowning as the cause of death.
Neff reports that the body recovery team found the bodies ar- ranged more or less in a line, with the hands of the hindmost "clutching tight on the sides of the third man at chest level, the third man had his hands clutched identically on the second and likewise this man on the lead man. This lead man was not holding on to anyone but was clutching a pair of glasses in one hand by their bridge with the two earpieces sticking straight ahead, unfolded." The lead man also had an electric headlamp, strapped around his neck, with the headlight resting on his chest, still glow- ing, powered by a six volt lantern battery. A flashlight was in his other hand. The group was facing back into the cave. Neff speculated that they tried to get out Sunday evening, found the cave too flooded, went back to the upper levels, then headed out again on Monday morning, only to be turned back again. They then succumbed to hypothermia. Neff feels the still burning headlamp indicates this since a lantern battery wouldn't burn for more than ten hours and thus a fresh one had to have been affixed early Monday morning, presumably before they started out the second time. This is a very bizarre situation. The coroner pronounced death by drowning due to water present in the victims' lungs. Yet, if this is so, why were the bodies joined as if following the leader in a desperate situation? If the group were moving along the cave, found the water too deep and began to drown, there is no possibility they would remain holding to each other in the orderly fashion rigor mortis left them in. The death throes from suf- focation demand a terrific struggle and an arbitrary grasping and grabbing. Hypothermia is the likely answer but the recreated scene is still a strange one. The group, cold from getting wet when they first found the cave en- trance flooded, huddles for hours as hypothermia sets in. Then, perhaps with only one person still capable, they decide to try again, a desperation attempt. They proceed single file each holding on to the one in front while in the deep water-perhaps only the leader had a workable light, certainly only he had the strength and resolve to keep them going. Then they found the entrance still blocked-they would have to go back. As they headed back to wait some more, their strength and resolve faded. The leader col- lapsed. Since he was the force keeping the others going, they succumbed at that time as well. Dying, they fell over, still holding to each other, taking in some water with their last breath. Still, to be lying there together holding to each other underwater, they had to have died at the same time. The odds against this are very high. Yet it seems to have happened. One last note is that in this case the cavers don't seem to have been ir- responsible. The cave apparently floods only under very extraordinary cir- cumstances.