“Within approximately 3-4 hours the stretcher with the injured person could be out of the cave. The last stretch was covered faster than expected, thanks to the stretches previously unblocked and to the medical staff’s assessment of avoiding prolonged stops. The same last year during the intervention, the stretch was covered in around 12 hours.” This was announced by the Alpine Rescue Service around 10pm on Tuesday evening 17 December regarding the recovery operations of Ottavia Piana, the speleologist who was stranded following a fall into the Bueno Fonteno Abyss since Saturday afternoon and whose recovery is ongoing continuously since Saturday night. “This is an estimate subject to the health conditions of the injured person”, specifies the Alpine Rescue.
Rescue activities have been continuing uninterrupted since Saturday evening when, around 10pm, the alarm went off: the accident dates back to the previous 4pm, but communications in the cave are practically impossible. The rescuers themselves had to install a wired telephone line to be able to communicate with the healthcare and Alpine Rescue personnel who are with Ottavia Piana, whose conditions are stationary.
Last night she was made to rest, as she had practically not slept since Saturday. “The most difficult part of the route, the one with the narrowest environments, has been completed and the work of the dismantling workers has therefore been completed. Ottavia speaks, collaborates and talks about her explorations in the Bueno Fonteno abyss”, the rescuers reported today. It is clear that under normal conditions the journey out of the cave would take around four hours. However, with the stretcher and the injured thirty-two year old, the times are much more diluted and the Alpine Rescue teams are gradually changing over. Outside the cave, the firefighters of the Alpine river speleo unit of the Bergamo command took steps, in collaboration with the Alpine Rescue service itself, to reclaim the wooded area from which, once brought back out of the abyss, it could be hoisted with a winch the stretcher with Ottavia Piana, to then be transferred by air ambulance to the hospital.
The team also made safe the impervious access route to the cave which could be used to transport the speleologist, if it was not possible to carry out the rescue by helicopter with the winch. Everything will also depend on the exit time, at the end of the operations. This afternoon the rescuers also took stock of the activities underway during a summit in the Prefecture in Bergamo. “Everyone’s hope is that the speleologist Ottavia Piana can be brought to safety as soon as possible for the necessary treatment.
The speleological recovery activity will continue to be followed by the Prefecture and all the rescue teams, with the attention that the protection of human life deserves”, said the prefect of Bergamo, Luca Rotondi, at the end of the meeting, in which all the institutional components, the police forces and volunteers who are participating in the recovery operations and activities relating to logistics, organization and administrative measures related to the rescue took part.
“The meeting allowed us to take stock of the state of the recovery activities which present numerous critical aspects, from the patient’s condition to the imperviousness of the passages which must be made wider through small demolitions, manual or, with due caution, carried out through explosive charges – explains a note from the Prefecture -. Around 80 volunteer speleologist rescuers are taking turns for the transport of the stretcher and for the unblocking activities, with extremely tiring interventions and shifts prefect addressed in particular the Alpine Rescue, the firefighters, the mayor and the community of Fonteno which in recent days is collaborating and welcoming the rescuers with the generosity and industriousness typical of Val Seriana”.
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