Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 20, 1995 TAG: 9501200096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Claude Burns has lived in the Bath County community of Burnsville - home to 83 registered voters - all his life. Folks in the tiny suburb of Williamsville consider the 73-year-old Burns their unofficial mayor, a title that flatters but seems to embarrass him.
Burns sums up Burnsville this way: "We have a nice time back here in the hills ... so peaceful, so quiet."
The serenity Burns so enjoys was nowhere to be found Wednesday.
From his home on Virginia 614, Burns watched ambulances, school buses, jeeps, vans, cars, and huge camperlike satellite television trucks cruise by. They were headed for Cavern Valley Civic Center - or the command post, as it was known Tuesday and Wednesday.
A half-mile down the road, three men had been trapped in a limestone cave for nearly three days. A rescue effort, led by two cavers who had slithered their way to freedom Tuesday, was under way.
By noon, more than 15 photographers and reporters had flocked to Burnsville.
Burns was delighted to see the traffic: "It was nice to see so many people coming to our community for such a good cause," he said.
Not everyone was as happy - especially the men trapped in Barberry Cave. They wanted the media to leave them alone.
The cavers, all experts with decades of experience among them, were embarrassed that a rainstorm during the weekend had caused the cave to clog, leaving only a 5-inch-high passage to the surface.
All of them had escaped from the cave by Wednesday evening, but none would talk publicly about the ordeal. They didn't want to be on television or in the newspaper, and while thankful for the help, the cavers told friends that the rescue effort was overblown.
"It was embarrassing for them," said John Hempel, a coordinator for the National Cave Rescue Commission, who said the trapped men were some of the best cavers in the country. "We'll be teasing them about this for a long time."
Mary Sue Socky, an officer in the Blue Ridge chapter of the National Speleological Society, said Thursday that the secrecy surrounding the cavers' rescue was no surprise to her. In fact, she said rescuers often go out of their way to keep the media from finding out when cavers are trapped.
"Our most successful rescues," she said, "the media doesn't even know about."
She said rescue crews are worried more about cave security than about embarrassing cavers trapped underground. They get especially skittish if someone asks to copy a cave's map.
"That type of information in the hands of the wrong people could be horribly used," she said. "It's almost classified information."
Cave enthusiasts fear that noncavers who get their hands on a map will either vandalize the cave or injure themselves, making even more rescues necessary.
The Burnsville cave where the men were trapped is so difficult to traverse that its entrance is sealed with a padlock and opened only for expert cavers who have permission from the landowner.
The cave was discovered about a year ago when a sinkhole appeared near Nevin Davis' house in Bath County. The 52-year-old Davis led the five-man expedition into the cave last weekend.
The five men lowered themselves into the cave Friday afternoon on a two-day mission to explore and map it. It wasn't until they tried to exit Sunday that they discovered that heavy rainfall had swollen an underground stream and caused rocks and sediment to block the passageway.
Equipped with wetsuits, lights, sleeping bags and food, the trapped cavers - all certified cave rescuers - didn't panic. They knew they had plenty of air and eventually would get out.
The smallest two members of the crew, Mike Ficco, 25, and Ben Schwartz, 20, were able to wiggle through the 5-inch passage Tuesday. The intensive rescue effort began later that night.
More than 100 expert cavers and rescue workers flocked to Burnsville to help. The Mine Safety and Health Administration was there. An Air Force transport plane carrying cave rescue experts was en route to the scene when the last men got free.
"We turned the plane around," Hempel said.
In order to dig out a passageway for the trapped men, rescuers in wet suits had to lie on their backs in two to three inches of water - flowing at 100 gallons a minute - and wriggle feet first into the opening. Hemple compared it to sliding underneath a car for 100 yards.
Rescuer Ron Luker said Barberry is one of the toughest caves he has ever explored.
"It just flipped the scale," he said. "It was very intimidating."
After the rescue was complete, the trapped cavers all went to Davis' nearby farmhouse. The commotion at the command post, however, didn't slow down for several hours.
Virginia 614, right in front of the Cavern Valley Civic Center, was blocked by rescue vehicles and supply trucks, making it nearly impossible for any vehicles to get through.
But Burns said it wasn't Burnsville's first traffic jam.
Nope, the roads get more crowded when the nearby church has homecoming or when a country-western singer performs at the civic center.
"They get clogged up pretty often," he said.
by CNB