Accidents in underground objects in Croatia

Darko Bakšić
Dinko Novosel

From 1960 until today, in the records of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service, in the territory of Croatia, 92 rescue missions from underground objects have been recorded. It would be worth mentioning that beside pits and caves, these objects include doline as well as artificial formations like water-wells and mines.
Considering the type objects, most accidents occurred in pits, up to 60 % of cases.
In 16 % of cases, rescuers entered the pits located in the search area during search missions in order to check whether the missing person had accidentally fallen in the pit.
Largest number of accidents, even 25% (or 32 %) of them were fatal, where in most cases, victims were not cavers. In fourteen cases, cause of such fatal accidents was accidental fall into a pit, in five cases it was a suicide and in three cases it was drowning (two were cavedivers diving in siphons) and in one case it was a suffocation from poisonous gas in a mine. Two cavedivers that were accidentally killed were the only cavers who died in a caving accident in Croatia.
When we focus at the injuries, number of those heavy and slightly injured is about the same. Heavy injuries were spine fractures, multiple fractures and fractures of lower extremities.

In chart 1 we can notice the rising trend in rescue missions. Therefore, from the year 2000 till 2009 there was 45 recorded rescue missions from underground objects.

Out of 92 rescue missions altogether, 79 of them were performed in order to save people and remaining 13 missions for retrieving animals. Accidents happened mainly to non-cavers (in 57 % of cases), while cavers got hurt about half as much (in 22 % of cases).

The most common cause of accidents, except the previously mentioned accidental fall in a pit or a suicide is exhaustion and fall of rock in a vertical. Unfortunately, for the large number of accidents the cause could not be determined.

In the last ten years, number of cavers in Croatia increased, also number of tourists in tourist caves and in adventure package tours in non-tourist caves increased as well, interest of foreign cavers for deep pits in Croatia also improved, therefore we can expect the increase of accidents and rescue missions.

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