| Name | Age | Sex | Injuries | Injured areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buice, Rick | 31 | Male | Not recorded | Not recorded |
At 10:15 on Saturday, March 3, Rick Buice (31), Will Chamberlain (26), Elizabeth Ferguson (38) and Tom Selmon (22) entered Sinking Cove Cave in Franklin County, Tennessee. Depending upon susceptibility to cold they were wearing from shorty to full wetsuits. Sinking Cove is a resurgent stream cave and they planned on doing some surveying. They pushed upstream, mapping side leads. One lead broke into big passage and they surveyed about 800 feet. When they tired, they started out. They reached the main stream to find it beginning to get muddy and ris- ing. Making their way with some difficulty they reached the first room, some 300 feet inside the entrance. They went for it, with Chamberlain in the lead. As he neared the entrance he had to fight to keep from being swept away. Ahead he could see an air space of only three inches high and ten inches wide and a raging current below it. He retreated and at 6 p.m. the group decided to sit it out. Outside, the same storm that was the cause of the contemporaneous Anderson Springs Cave entrapment had struck. Three friends who had gone ridgewalking took notice and began a wait outside the cave. Ex- plosives were obtained to modify the entrance to allow it to drain more quickly, but were not used. The trapped cavers retreated to the first room and began a watch on the water level with occasional exercise to keep warm. After six hours, the water began to rise again, gaining four to six feet in height in two hours. At a.m. Sunday the group retreated to a higher place a bit upstream. Time passed slowly. At 10 a.m. the water had dropped over a foot and they moved back to their first sanctuary. More waiting. At 7:30 p.m. Sunday the water seemed well down so they headed out. Where they had turned back before was now 12 to 14 inches of air space. They emerged around 9:30 p.m., having been in the cave some 34 hours.
34 hrs. Speleonews Jun79 p55. NSS News Apr79 p92.
This record was last updated on 29th Apr 2024 at 03:11 UTC.