I am not spending a lot of time on ScubaBoard these days, and I will try to address a couple of the key comments.
I am quite sure the decision to stop the exploration and leave the cave sealed would have been made without the fatality. In a sad irony, the reality of that situation had been realized not many minutes before.
The day before the fatality, we had come to a consensus that this cave was not at all what the city had envisioned based on decades old reports and descriptions on restaurant menus. The map on the brochure was not remotely close to reality. There is no cavern zone whatsoever, and except for a few places, the widest areas would be called restrictions in some definitions. The largest "room" can fit a couple people comfortably. We tried never to put three in it at a time. There was almost nothing horizontal--the cave goes downward on a very steep slant. In our discussions, we realized that the cave is dangerous enough to require something like an Abe Davis award for entrance. That does not fit with the city's ideas about making this a draw for cave tourism. Only a handful of divers would be interested.
The next morning, the diver leading the final push came to the end. The tunnel had walled out. There would be no going any farther. So in summary, we had a narrow, nearly vertical shaft with loose rock and silt going to a depth of about 195 feet with not much more distance from that from the entrance to the end. Sound exciting? How far would you travel for that experience? When he hit the wall, the lead diver knew the project was over. The cave just didn't go anywhere.
It was on that exit that the fatality occurred.
The decision that there was no point in going on with the exploration would have been made without the fatality, and the primary decision makers were dedicated cave explorers with decades of experience, not an hysterical land owner, sheriff, or city council.
