Nöbetçi Eczaneler
The body of a 43-year-old British cave diver, who had been missing in the Gouffre de Saint-Sauveur cave system since Friday, was found on Sunday after a multi-agency search operation.
The man, who has not yet been publicly named, but is described as highly experienced, was part of a group of eight that had travelled to explore the system, located near Calès in south-western France.
He entered the system at around 3.30 pm on Friday, 18 September, but emergency services were alerted at around 8 pm on Friday evening after he failed to return within the allotted timeframe.
French authorities activated the underground-rescue provisions of the country’s emergency response system, ORSEC (Organisation de la Réponse de Sécurité Civile), with firefighters and specialist cave rescuers from Spéléo Secours Français beginning search operations the same evening.
The team was reinforced gendarmes from the Marseillan nautical brigade on Saturday morning, with a spokesperson for SSF saying they hoped the missing diver had been able to take refuge in an air-filled chamber within the system.
The diver had reportedly entered the cave system with an eight-hour supply of breathing gas, plus a backup tank that had not been used.
Unfortunately, the rescue team found the chamber empty, and the missing diver’s body was finally located on Sunday at a depth of 88m, according to a statement from Cahors public prosecutor Clara Ribeiro.
Local media reports said it had not been possible to remove him from the cave as he was entangled in his guideline, with narrow passages and reduced visibility from disturbed clay making recovery difficult.
Ribeiro said that in spite of the difficulties, ‘a new attempt will take place very soon’.
The Gouffre de Saint-Sauveur system is a karst resurgence (the point at which an underground river returns to the surface) of the River Ouysse, and one of several such systems within the Lot region of southern France.
The region is popular with cave divers, with tunnels in the Saint-Sauveur system known to descent beyond 100 metres in depth.
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