Cave Rescue International Meeting, Belgium 1963

by H. G. Watts

This meeting which was held over the Easter week-end 1963, was organised by the Fédération Spéléologique de Belgique, in collaboration with the Belgian Red Cross. Its object was to demonstrate the Belgian cave rescue organisation and methods, and to promote discussion on the subject between Spéléologists from various countries.

The demonstrations and discussions took place in Brussels and at Han-sur-Lesse; they were attended by representatives of Spéléological clubs in France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Lebanon and the United Kingdom. The British clubs represented were the Chelsea Pot-holing Club, the Mendip Caving Club and the Y.R.C., the latter by J. Lovett and H. G. Watts. All delegates were the guests of the Belgian Red Cross and of Spéléo-Secours, the cave rescue section of the Federation Spéléologique de Belgique.

BRUSSELS. Saturday, 13th April, 1963

The delegates assembled after lunch at the Headquarters of the Belgian Red Cross, 98 Chausee de Vleurgat, Brussels. The organisation and work of Spéléo-Secours was described by Monsieur A. Slagmolen, Head of the rescue group, and was illustrated by a short film and slides showing the use of the folding stretcher. The delegates were then taken to the vehicle park where some 30 members of Spéléo-Secours were drawn up in front of their five vehicles. These were: —

Radio van.
Self-contained soup kitchen.
Equipment van.
Large ambulance.
Small ambulance.

The group was for the most part composed of young men and women in their twenties, who wore a uniform consisting of blue-grey boiler suit with the red cross on the arm, “Spéléo-Secours” shoulder flashes and black berets. They looked very smart and were evidently well disciplined, though it was emphasised that they were entirely voluntary and unpaid. When on a rescue they wear black helmets, each with a two digit number in large white figures, and the leader’s instructions are given to numbers instead of names.

When the guests arrived the team split into small groups, each responsible for one of the vehicles, and were on parade to answer questions and show their equipment. We were also shown the Red Cross dispatching room and radio centre, both of which are used in connection with Spéléo-Secours when necessary. The vehicles then left for Han-sur-Lesse, where a camp had been established, and the guests followed after a buffet supper.

The Brussels group of Spéléo-Secours consists of about 40 volunteers, drawn from among the local caving enthusiasts; they are on call day and night. There are also local groups averaging ten persons in each of the provincial towns: Liege, Charleroi, Verviers and Rochefort; there is a special grouo of cave divers. Practice meets take place in caves every two months and instructional evenings in Brussels once per month.

In the event of an accident, a member of the victim’s party must ring the Brussels Red Cross, No. 02.44.70.10. The officer on duty takes down the information, which should be given according to a set form available in the local police and fire stations, hotels and farm-houses in the cave districts. He passes it on to a responsible member of Spéléo-Secours, who notifies the group nearest to the scene of the accident and calls out the required number for a Brussels team if the accident is too serious to be dealt with locally. Meanwhile the ambulance is got ready at the Red Cross garage and the first members of the team see that any extra equipment is loaded if wanted, for example to deal with flood or landslide. Other local groups are called up if and when relief rescue teams are needed.

Generally speaking the ambulance gets away within an hour of the alarm and arrives at the scene of the accident, anywhere in Belgium, not more than 3 hours after the alarm. The local team usually gets to the scene within an hour of the alarm.

GROTTES DE HAN. Sunday, 14th April, 1963

Most of the delegates and all members of the Spéléo-Secours were accommodated close to the cave entrance in a camp consisting of about 12 tents, which had been provided by theBelgian Youth Hostel Organisation. Each tent measured about 12 by 16 feet and held 8 people; camp beds and blankets were provided. There were also tents in which were mounted photographs and equipment demonstrating the development and activities of Spéléo-Secours, an ambulance tent and a lorry fitted with air-pump, fan, electric generator and tools.

There was a full programme for the day, the principal items of which were: —

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Demonstration of rescue operations in the Grotte de Han and the River Lesse.
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Lunch in the Pavilion des Grottes adjoining the cave.
4.15 to 5.15 p.m. Formal discussion under the Chairmanship of Monsieur A. de Martynoff, President of the Federation Spéléologique de Belgique.
5.30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Conducted tour through the Grottes de Han, including newly discovered section recently opened to the public.
8 p.m. to Midnight. Supper, followed by lectures and informal discussion.

RESCUE DEMONSTRATION

(1)    The victim, a young woman, was supposed to have fallen in a narrow passage and to be unconscious. She was strapped firmly into a folding stretcher, wrapped in a blanket and was handed through the passage over the knees of the rescue team who were wedged opposite to each other some 5 ft. above floor level. A small orange coloured tent had been erected on the first piece of level ground from the scene of the accident, the victim was placed in this pending the arrival of first aid or the doctor.

(2)    Two male volunteers were strapped in stretchers and handled up and down boulder slopes in a large chamber.

(3)    Two men, strapped in the stretchers, were lowered vertically 60 ft. down an overhang to a receiving party on a boulder slope below, they were carried to dinghies on the underground river and manoeuvred to the exit by frogmen.

For the vertical drop a guide rope was first thrown to the receiving party and a double life-line was used to lower the stretcher, which was prevented from swinging by side ropes attached one to each side of the head end and held by members of the lowering party. The actual lowering was done by one man taking the weight on the rope passing over his shoulder and across his back, the rope then running round a large stalagmite. No pulley block was used and there seemed to be no other provision against a runaway of the rope. It was noticed that the rescue party followed the victims down by abseiling, a method often used in Continental pot-holes and considered by many to be more practical than a ladder descent.

(4)    A rack and winch were used to show how a large rock could be moved on a boulder slope by a wire rope round the rock and held by a loop round another rock.

(5)    A rock weighing six tons was lifted a few inches by a hydraulic jack supplied through a flexible tube from a pump some distance away. This showed how a trapped limb could be released.

(6)    A dummy, equipped with mask and compressed air cylinder, was carried under water by 3 frogmen from one side of the River Lesse to the other, a distance of 70 ft. to illustrate rescue through a siphon.

(7)    A live victim on a folding stretcher was lowered down a rope stretched obliquely from a point on the hill about 200 ft. above river level to the ground on the other side of the river, the total length being about 250 yards.

THE DISCUSSION

Monsieur de Martynoff called for candid criticism and suggestions from the foreign visitors and asked the Y.R.C. to open the discussion. John Lovett commented on the thinness of the ropes used as life-lines, asked what measures were taken to keep the victim warm and doubted the value of the tent. A lively and interesting exchange of views followed, the main points of which are given below.

Ropes. These appeared thin and of a peculiar hosiery type weave. The reply was that they were 8 mm. nylon as used in the Alps; the French agreed that they were satisfactory.

Hands. It had been noticed that in all cases except that of a small woman, arms and hands were left outside the stretcher: this might lead to injury or at least scraping of the hands; an injured arm in a sling or plaster should certainly be inside. The Belgians felt that arms left outside would enable the victim to help the rescuers, if he were conscious, by easing himself along. In most cases the stretcher was too narrow for the arms to be enclosed.

Tent. Doubt was expressed about the value of the tent. This led to an interesting number of points, the Belgians being very much in favour, the French equally strongly against. The R.A.F. rescue orange colour gave a cheerful and comforting feeling to the victim, he was not exposed to the damp and gloomy atmosphere of the cave. The tent provided warmth and shelter.

Against this it was felt that the establishment of such a base was undesirable and might detract from the main object which was to get the victim out as quickly as possible. Condensation inside the tent could be tiresome and uncomfortable; the tent was one more thing to get into the cave and occupied the efforts of one man who might well bring in something more useful. The tent was in any case too small for anyone to be able to attend to the victim inside it. If it were in a hollow a dangerous concentration of carbon dioxide might develop.

Warmth. A five-litre thermos of hot water was taken into the cave but no provision was made for heating water on the spot by spirit lamp or primus. There was no arrangement for supplying dry clothes, except the blanket accompanying the stretcher. Self-heating cans of soup were unknown.

Lovett described the practice followed by the British Cave Rescue Organisation of sending in with the first rescue men a sealed rubber inner tube section containing dry woollen underclothes and a sleeping bag, and another in which were cans of self-heating soup.

Stretcher. The folding stretcher was criticised as being too narrow and giving inadequate protection to head and feet. It was stiffened and protected by wooden laths sown into the fabric, but the head was only protected by putting on the helmet and covering this with the fabric hood of the stretcher. This did not prevent the head from moving and might be dangerous in a case of injury to the skull or neck.

Lovett described the British stretcher stiffened by flexible steel bands, curved at head and feet for protection. It was thought essential to enclose the arms, though the Belgians insisted that freedom of the arms made it possible for the victim to be more easily worked through narrow places.

LECTURES

The first lecture, by Dr. Castin, of the Spéléo-Club de Dijon, described cave rescue in France, which is based on very much the same lines as British C.R.O. practice. Many accidents were the result of ignorance and imprudence by novices and the lecturer emphasised strongly that the first duty of a Club was to give newcomers a basic knowledge of cave practice and a progressive practical training under the watchful supervision of those with experience. A strict discipline must be enforced and young people must be discouraged from individual adventures below ground.

In reply to a question, Dr. Castin was in favour of plastering a fractured limb in the cave before the victim was moved. In this connection he made the point, that in France and to some extent also in the British Isles, caves and pot-holes are bigger, longer and more inaccessible than in Belgium. Thus rescue is often a long drawn out and complex operation. On the other hand many Belgian caves are narrow, with long difficult stretches.

The second lecture was given by Dr. Masy, of Liege, who described a survival experiment in which three volunteers had spent 5 days in a cave at a temperature of 8°C (46°F) with no food, no water and no spare clothing. They were in telephone contact with the surface and carried out simple physical checks such as testing muscular strength. After the first day they did not suffer much from hunger and they found the water col-lected drop by drop from the roof in a helmet so unpleasant that they did not drink it. The humid atmosphere prevented dehydration of the body. Muscular strength decreased slowly each day but when the time came for them to go out on the fifth day they had no difficulty in doing so unaided though the way out was long and difficult.

Two of the men were wearing leather boots and woollen stockings, the other rubber soled canvas shoes; the footwear was not removed during the trial. The men wearing boots suffered swelling and pain in the feet for several days afterwards, a condition known during the 1914/18 war as “trench feet”. The man wearing canvas shoes suffered no ill effects.

The conclusion from this trial was that a party isolated in a cave can subsist, even at a rather low temperature, without food, drink or warmth, for several days provided they do not panic. They must from time to time remove boots and massage feet.

There had been a fatal accident in Belgium the previous January when a party of five was cut off by flood in Trou Bernard, Mont-sur-Meuse. The two experienced cavers in the party tried to force a way out through flood water at 1°C and died of exposure. They would have survived if they had waited for rescue; the other three were got out uninjured in the early hours of the following morning.

LES GROTTES DE HAN

The Grottes de Han have been formed over the millenia by the passage underground of the River Lesse, a river no smaller than the River Tees at Barnard Castle. The cave is inside a hill of height about 500 ft. above the village of Han-sur-Lesse and of about 5 miles in circumference. The Lesse disappears into a swallet on the far side of the hill and emerges from a big cave in strata of limestone inclined at 30° to the horizontal, 400 yards from the village.

The main cave can be followed, and is now open to the public, from the river exit for a distance of about 1½ miles to a point on the far side of the hill about 300 yards from the swallet. The whole of this route has been levelled and lighted, though an interconnecting link containing magnificent formations was only discovered in the autumn of 1961. Hitherto nobody has succeeded in following the whole underground course of the river, but the Federation are confident that only 10 per cent, of the system has so far been explored and much work remains to be done.

The developed part of the cave consists of alternating narrow passages and large chambers, nearly all of which contain fine formations. Access to the cave is by boat for the first 400 yards to a landing stage in a very large chamber, much of which is filled with boulder scree but which must have a height of 350 ft. and a diameter of at least 800 ft. The exit from this chamber is by way of a very narrow fissure (widened for the public) where the demonstration was made of passing the stretcher across the knees of the rescue team wedged in the fissure. It was disillusioning to find, on the far side of this fissure, another enormous chamber where three terraces had been levelled and equipped as a cafe where some 500 people can be served with hot chocolate, coffee, coca-cola and cakes. One would not have been surprised if the Halle Orchestra had been playing the Venusberg motif from Tannhauser on one of the terraces.

The cave is ideal for a rescue demonstration since the arrangements for the public make it possible for a large number of people to see what is going on. The only feature missing is an actual pot-hole, but a vertical drop of some 70 ft. from a boulder scree to the river makes most pot-hole opera-tions possible.

CONCLUSIONS

The meeting was well organised, well attended and most instructive, both to the visitors from abroad and to the Belgian Spéléo-Secours. There is no doubt that it is a good thing for Club prestige for the Y.R.C. to be represented at such inter national meetings from time to time.

The organisation of Spéléo-Secours was impressive, the uniform and quasi-military discipline of this voluntary body, admirable; it made recognition easy and ensured that there was a proper chain of command and that every member knew his job. The method of call-up and of getting to the scene of an accident seemed quick and efficient, but would of course need modification in other countries to suit local conditions.

The number of cavers in Belgium is still measured in hundreds, whereas in the British Isles they now number many thousands. Nevertheless it is evident that caving and pot-holing are becoming increasingly popular in Belgium and it is good to know that there exists so efficient, keen and active a rescue organisation. Spéléo-Secours had, at the time of the meeting, been called out to 15 rescue operations since the beginning of 1959, whereas in Britain there is an average of one call per week-end during the active season.

Spéléo-Secours would very much appreciate receiving copies of all accident reports issued by the British Cave Rescue Organisation, and any published literature giving descriptions of equipment and methods used. Such communications should be sent to Monsieur C. Slagmolen, 88 rue du Tilleul, Brussels, 3.

Meets by foreign clubs with the object of exploring the unknown regions of the Grottes de Han must be arranged with the owners of the cave, Societe Anonyme des Grottes de Han et de Rochefort, Han-sur-Lesse, Belgium. The President of this Societe is Monsieur van Hove.

Arrangements to go elsewhere in Belgium can be made with the Fédération Spéléologique de Belgique, 23 avenue des Azalees, Brussels, 3, whose President is Monsieur A. de Martynoff.

Information about Belgian caves can be obtained from the Federation’s Librarian, Guy de Block, 54 rue de la Limite, Brussels, 3.

It is a recognised courtesy that any group carrying out an exploration gives to the proprietors of the cave an account of its discoveries.