On Saturday, 06.02.2021, a 57 year old caver died in the “Mühlbachquellhöhle” in Bavaria/Germany near Dietfurt. This cave has several siphons and is more than 9 km long. (Infos and map on www.muehlbachquellhoehle.de)
The caver entered the cave saturday morning with 3 other cavers to install data loggers. They were on their way back to the entrance where they have to pass a short passage (about 6m) under water, so called “Maulwurfsiphon”. This was done with a mask and a small compressed air cylinder. This siphon is about 700 m from the entrance. Three cavers had already passed the siphon but then the fourth person did not appear. They returned in the siphon and pulled the victim out. As he was not breathing and there was no heart-activity, they immediately started with the resuscitation. One caver run outside to call for help. Then the official rescue started at about 16:00 h. The resuscitation was done for about 3,5 hours and then terminated because there were no hope for life.
The victim were brought outside at about 22:00 h. More than 200 people were involved: Red cross, fire-fighters, water-rescue, technical support, mountain-rescue and also the bavarian cave-rescue as part of the mountain-rescue. About 40 cave-rescuers were directly involved.
The diving-commission from ECRA offered their help but it was not necessary.
The caving-community is mourning with the family of the victim.
