General Vortex Incident Discussion

[Rick Murchison]

I told my wife a few days ago that if something ever happens to me underwater, and there's no hope of life, to just leave my @$$ where it is. A corpse isn't worth someone else getting hurt or killed.

The problem here is that we don't have certainty. If there were witnesses who'd seen him go in and waited for him to come out and he never did, that'd be one thing... but what we have is witnesses who saw him heading in on the evening of the 18th, but don't know if that's the dive he disappeared on or not! So, while everything (well, almost everything) seems to point at his being in the cave somewhere - especially the alert from the cadaver dogs - there's still that nagging doubt that he could be elsewhere... hence the continued search. The search has been exhaustive, and exhausting, and frustrating... and at this point, if he is in there, in my opinion he's buried under a slide rather than deeper in a hole than the searchers have looked.
Bottom line - there's enough uncertainty as to "what really happened to Ben" that a body is required to positively and finally establish that he did indeed die in the cave.
And sadly we may never know for sure.
Rick

 

[Tacman55]

In underwater searches for remains, once all attempts at location by visualization or tactile means have been exhausted searchers begin to look at technology to assist in locating remains or evidence of such.

Examples of such technology could be sonar or cameras to attempt to see in areas too treacherous for divers or where large areas can be covered more safely.. We (Public Safety Divers) have used metal detectors to look for braces or metal implants in layers of mud and silt when finding remains by other means were not probable.... In this case the missing subject should have much larger metal objects on or near his person than a drowning victim or crime victim.


In this case... I am curious if anyone who is familiar with the geological makeup of the area in Ponce De Leon and Vortex... can say whether there are metals that could be present at the depths and in the area of the cave to be searched further. If such metals are not present...technology which could locate metals may be able to detect the presence of cylinders. Hand held diver magnetometers could detect the presence of steel cylinders even through silt and bottom composition and other detectors could possibly detect aluminum.

In most search operations such technology is most often vessel deployed because the access issues which are being faced here due to overhead environment do not often exist. Such use of diver deployed technology for a search of this nature could be a first or if not, certainly rare.

The above are just ideas that could be visited... I am sure there are some subject matter experts lurking on here that could elaborate on the feasibility of such technology.

At the least it could possibly identify or eliminate the presence of what may be a diver's cylinders, that is if such technology will work in such an environment.

 

[vladimir]

.....

 

[Texas Torpedo]

Interesting... Tacman55

 

[DocYates]

Tight, specifically very low, but also narrow in alot of places.

Deep, 160' depths, with no helium onsite.

Silty and craggly, no visibility and the cave does its best to grab at you and hold you to it.

Wow....sounds like a bad place to be in.
Is the water flow significant enought o clear the silt awy pretty quickly in there? I know I have been to the mouth of Morrison Springs cave, many many years ago and the flow was tremendous coming out of there. I am sure it is not that impressive once in the cave where it is wide open, and the flow increases in the tight areas, but I would have thought a body could potentially be expelled in a high flow environment like that.
The thought of a cave in was what always scared me the most about cave diving. Hopefully the body is recoverable and not buried under a big pile of falling debri. You recovery guys have my prayers. I hope everyone gets out of there OK and they are able to find him eventually.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Depends on where in the cave you are... where its really tight, and deep, at the extent of the the maps, there's not much water flow as you've passed some of the water sources already. In the front of the cave, there's flow, but also much less chance of siltouts, atleast in the main passage.

 

[Heath Sapp]

..................

 

[spector39]

Tight, specifically very low, but also narrow in alot of places.

Deep, 160' depths, with no helium onsite.

Silty and craggly, no visibility and the cave does its best to grab at you and hold you to it.

Sounds like a nightmare. Not sure how you cave divers do it! On the map (http://www.floridacaves.com/vortexcave.JPG) , it looks like the max depth shown is around 119' and near the air pocket. Where does it get deeper? Is it off the map?

Also, I read there was a spot the rescue divers wouldn't venture to for safety reasons and that the body might be beyond it. Where is this place on the map? Sorry if this has been discussed before; there are hundreds of posts and multiple threads on this story and it's been hard to keep up. Thank you...

 

[Dive-aholic]

That map doesn't even show 1/2 of the system (probably not even 1/3 of it). There's a profile map that shows the 160' depth after the 3rd restriction and goes up through the 4th restriction in the system, the area that is now too small to get into. Unfortunately, it's not my map to post. I think someone did post a photo of the map that used to be on the wall of the Vortex shop.

 

[spector39]

Not sure if this was already posteed, but I was looking at caving videos on youtube and came across this one. Apparently, it's from the same guy who took the video of the victim.

YouTube - # 1 Lost Diver The PianoRoom