| Name | Age | Sex | Injuries | Injured areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kerr, Chris | 22 | Male | Fractures | Femur, ribs |
On Friday, December 1, at 11 a.m. a group of cavers entered Cueva del Brinco on the highlands west of Victoria in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. They were Chris Kerr (22), Hal Lloyd, Jim Smith and Steve Zeman. They intended to push upper leads in the Valhalla section. Traversing the Historic Section, they ascended the Chute, passed the Laguna Verde Cutoff, climbed up to the Helictite Room and on up the wet and arduous Tin Can Alley, through several tight places, including Argonaut Crawl. Beyond this is Valhalla. In the first part of Valhalla, the floor is covered with breakdown. After 120 feet one encounters an unclimable dropoff covered with unstable, muddy breakdown. Backtracking about 100 feet allows one to bypass this drop via a fissure. The group missed this bypass. Kerr arrived first, then Smith. Kerr saw tracks going down around a breakdown block and tried to follow them. At the block it got very vertical and he turned to face the slope. As he reached around the block to get a handhold, he lost his footing and fell, hitting his chin on the lip, knocking off his helmet and light. He screamed. It was 1:30 p.m. The others rushed to the edge of the pit; luckily he had only fallen 20 feet but still had, apparently, suffered a disabling injury - broken leg or ankle. It took 10 minutes to find the bypass and get to Kerr. They decided he had a broken left femur, ankle injury and possible broken ribs. A space blanket was gotten out and wrapped around the victim and carbide lamps were placed under it for warmth. At 3 p.m. Lloyd and Smith left for the surface to get help. There were no other cavers in the area at that time but Smith wrote, in English and Spanish, a basic rescue message and gave it to a local resident, Antonio Ledezma, to take to Victoria, 6 to 8 hours away, where a call could be made to Texas for additional manpower. Smith and Lloyd, armed with first-aid material (pack frame, food, stove, water, warm clothes, sleeping bags and aspirin) returned to the accident site. A note was left on the fieldhouse door. Operations were begun to move Kerr out of the cave. By 3 a.m. he had been gotten up the drop. This exhausted the three rescuers and caused Kerr much pain. It was decided to bivouac. Zeman and Lloyd made a 4-hour round trip to the Dressing Room to get some of the first-aid gear they had stashed there. Kerr was then placed in a sleeping bag with wet suits under him. Smith prepared food and then he and Kerr slept; Zeman and Lloyd left the cave. At 3 a.m. Ledezma arrived at Victoria to find the telephone office closed until 7 a.m. At that time he got through to Bill Stone in Austin. The basic situation was conveyed but the victim was wrongly interpreted as Jim Smith. Calls were made and rescuers made ready in Austin and McAllen. A call to the National Cave Rescue Commission for possible medical support produced instead international diplomatic activity and Air Force participation. Two trucks of rescuers from the Rio Grande Valley and one from Austin were flown to Victoria, in Mexico, on C-130's saving hours of travel time. By midnight on Saturday the three trucks were at the fieldhouse, finding Zeman and Smith asleep. It was decided to start operations in the morning. Meanwhile a group reconnoitered an entrance unknown to the accident caving party, the Entrada de Vapor, less than 300 feet from the Argonaut in Tin Can Alley. The report was favorable. Early the next morning Art Centeno (medical student) and Tracy Johnson (nurse) proceeded to the victim and other teams went in to enlarge passage. A great deal of effort was expended in that direction, using sledge hammers and blasting. At 8 p.m. (Sunday) the move was begun with Kerr strapped in a Robertson litter and six cavers as bearers. In some places only two people could handle it at a time and on occasion a rope was rigged to support it while it was guided along. In several tight places Kerr was obliged to pull himself along. At 2 a.m. he was hauled up the 25-foot entrance pit and carried to the fieldhouse. At 10:30 Monday morning Kerr was trucked down the mountain, across the border and arrived at McAllen General Hospital at midnight, where he was treated.
This rescue is a fine example of competent cavers, each assuming an appropriate role, working together to reach the common goal, the extraction of the victim. Leadership was by suggestion and example - there was no rigid structure to the rescue groups. The accident itself seems avoidable, however, and such things should not happen to competent cavers. Kerr was lucky he was not critically injured and that there was an entrance nearby. When climbing one should be able to assess a situation and have reasonable assurance that one can do it, if it is to be done without a belay. Kerr's helmet came off in the fall and this could have cost him his life. A helmet should have a chin strap that does not allow this to happen.