Training pays off during BLM cave rescues near Carlsbad

Quarterly cave search and rescue trainings paid off during two fast and successful cave rescues at Bureau of Land Management (BLM) caves in the Carlsbad area in March.

The Carlsbad area has the highest density of cave and karst in the world, and it is a mecca for recreational cavers, so incidents are inevitable, said Tom Evans, a geologist in the BLM’s Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) who has trained for cave rescues for 20 years and participated in both rescues.

They are rare events, however, and Evans had never participated in an actual rescue until the night of March 11-12 at the BLM’s Wind-Hicks Cave. The caver had minor injuries, and the rescue took about an hour and a half from cave entry to completion. Evans entered the cave and assisted local firefighters.

Thinking it would be a long time, if ever, before he participated in another cave rescue, fate proved Evans wrong when he received another call for an injured caver at the BLM’s Parks Ranch Cave on March 21. Evans served as incident commander, and a helicopter was necessary to fly the caver to a hospital in Texas. It took about four hours from cave entry to completion.

By cave-rescue standards, both were lightning fast. They also highlighted the importance of the quarterly training of the area’s interagency cave search and rescue team, which includes the BLM, the City of Carlsbad and Eddy County fire departments, the U.S. Forest Service and Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Evans said he cannot understate how much it helped that everyone knew each other and had already worked together while training.

While rescuers found the caving party in the first rescue easily because the caller pinpointed where they were, the second incident wasn’t so simple.

The caver’s family, not the caver, called authorities when the caver didn’t call by a certain time, and although the cave register showed the caver had entered, the cave includes more than four miles of passage and at least 20 entrances, Evans said.

The caver could have been anywhere within the cave and might have even entered one of the hundreds of other caves in the area, Evans said.

As incident commander, Evans sent six teams to points underground and a seventh to search a trench line that the caver had a high probability of coming out on if the caver had exited the cave.

That’s where a team of three City of Carlsbad firefighters found the caver, Evans said. The caver had exited the cave but tried to climb out of a large pit and became injured.

“This was a management nightmare [due to the layout of Parks Ranch Cave] and it turned out to be very easy,” Evans said. “The only reason it was accomplishable was because we already had relationships with these groups, and we knew those people. I knew we could rely on them. It would not have been possible without those existing relationships.”

For the first incident, about 15 firefighters from the City of Carlsbad and Eddy County, and Evans participated. For the second incident, nearly 30 people from the BLM, the city and county fire departments, Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Texas Search and Rescue, often called TEXSAR, participated.

In addition to Evans, Ellen Trautner, a natural resource specialist for cave and karst in the BLM CFO, Georgia Schneider, an outdoor recreation planner for caves in the BLM CFO, and Zeke Salas, an environmental protection assistant in the BLM CFO, assisted. Trautner and Schneider, experienced cavers, were team leaders and went in the cave to search, and Salas took detailed notes.

BLM personnel participated as volunteers, Evans said, and he appreciates the respect the professional firefighters showed them during both rescues.

The Carlsbad-area cave search and rescue team plans to train again in May, Evans said, and they will have a renewed sense of purpose.

“It is just a matter of time before someone gets hurt again, and it is important for all the agencies here to be prepared for that eventuality,” Evans said.