With tremendous increase and interest in cave tourism and cave exploration in Meghalaya, incidents and accidents inside the cave should not be overlooked. Sooner or later, mishaps are bound to happen.
With this in mind, the Meghalaya Adventurers Association (MAA) feels that it has a great responsibility to oversee and take care of any such accidents should they happen.
Gearing itself up to meet such eventualities, a cave rescue mock drill was organised by MAA at Krem Mawmluh, Sohra on November 12.
This cave rescue mock drill is also the first such exercise of its kind in India.
20 members from the MAA along with Robin Sheen, a member of the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation, arrive at Mawmluh Cherra Cement Limited (MCCL) plant by 10 am.
Two casualties were briefed by the overground controller immediately and entered the cave by 10:15 am.
An overground base control camp was set up at 10:30 am and role delegation was completed by 10:45 am. The search and rescue (S&R) team along with their kits entered the cave by 11 am to start searching.
Casualties were found by the S&R team at 12:10 pm in the middle of the river passage section. The casualties’ conditions as per the first aid medic were noted and attended to accordingly. All vitals like blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature were noted immediately and thereafter every 30 minutes by the first aid medic. Other injury conditions like bleeding, head injury, dehydration, etc were also noted by the first aid medic.
Simultaneously the S&R team created a hot point to comfort the casualties, feed them with hot soup, tea, biscuits and chocolates, and also change them to dry warm clothes.
The stretcher team entered the cave by 12:25 pm and reached the hot point by 12:45 pm.
As per the background setting details again, once the base control coordinator found out that a stretcher was needed, he called out for an ambulance around 12:30 pm. The ambulance arrived at the camp at 1:15 pm.
The stretcher reached the cave entrance by 1:45 pm, left the rigged cave entrance section by 2 pm, and reached the base control camp by 2:15 pm, thus concluding the successful operation within five hours.
It may be noted that the cave rescue mock drill was conducted following the Certified Cave Single Rope Technique (SRT), Cave Leadership, and Cave Rescue Training in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the month of July-August 2023 by a seven-member group of the MAA which was sponsored by the Government of Meghalaya.
