| Name | Age | Sex | Injuries | Injured areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heiss, John | 20 | Male | Cuts, bruises | Head, shoulder |
Tennessee, an unnamed pit
Thursday, 1 June 1972
Don Gass (21) and John Heiss (20) discovered a pit which they entered at about 5:30 p.m. Both of them had done vertical and horizontal caving for several years. "They rappelled down the narrow 15-foot drop, where they found a tight open- ing that sloped downwards. Heiss squeezed through this hole into a small, low room that opened over a drop that was 3 feet wide, 8 feet long and 15 feet deep. He crossed over the far end of the pit, where he rested for a while on a mud bank. He then climbed down the drop. He did not know that the wall of the pit that he climbed down was really a narrow rock sheet that divided the drop into two parts; the mud bank that he sat on covered over the other part of the drop. At the bottom of the drop, he found a 3-foot-high opening that connected the two halves of the pit. He crawled through the hole and just as his head entered the other chamber, the mud bank covering it collapsed.
"While he was on his hands and knees, a 50-pound rock struck the top of his fiber glass miner's helmet, crushing a hole through the helmet. The rock then hit his shoulder, inflicting a large, shallow cut. Although he had a chinstrap on, falling dirt and rocks hit the back of the reflector on his carbide light, knocking his helmet for- ward and off of his head. A smaller rock then hit his head, cutting it slightly. He then tucked his head down and back into the crawlway, which had protected the rest of his body. Almost 3 feet of dirt fell into the chamber.
"As his light, helmet, and other equipment had been buried by the rocks and dirt, Don Gass lowered down another helmet and light. After he recovered his own equipment, Heiss was able to climb out of the pit by himself." (Heiss)
Analysis: "The mud covering was not very stable to begin with, and sitting on it must have seriously weakened it. Climbing down and then crawling under the sheet of rock that supported the mud could have created enough vibrations to cause the collapse. Since the instability of the mud bank was not apparent from the top of the drop, not much could have been done to avoid the accident." (Heiss)
Source: Report by John Heiss
This record was last updated on 27th Apr 2024 at 23:11 UTC.