American cave explorer trapped more than 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below ground level in Turkey is awaiting his rescue.
He has also fallen ill due to the unfortunate incident.
40-year-old Mark Dickey, suffered gastrointestinal bleeding on Saturday, September 3, during an expedition with a group of others, including three other Americans, in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains.
In a video message from inside the cave and made available on Thursday, September 7, by Turkey’s communications directorate, Dickey thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts.
“Hi Mark Dickey from nearly a thousand metres,” Mr Dickey said. “The caving world is a really tight-knit group and it’s amazing to see how many people have responded on the surface.
“We’re still waiting for communications actually to reach down here. So right now it’s a day or two days of travel for information to get back and forth. I don’t quite know what’s happened, but I do know that the quick response of the Turkish government to get the medical supplies that I need, in my opinion, saved my life. I was very close to the edge.”
Watch the video below here
Turkish Cave Union also said in a statement that his bleeding had stopped and he was able to walk without assistance, but he would still need a stretcher to get him out of the cave.
He was placed under observation in a camp located 1,040 meters underground, where he was given blood injections by rescuers and paramedics.
The Union added that “this operation is considered, from a logistical and technical standpoint, one of the largest rescue operations inside caves in the world.”
A number of rescue workers from several other countries, including Croatia and Hungary, flew to Turkey to assist in the rescue operation.
Dickey is an instructor with the US National Cave Rescue Committee (NCRC), is highly regarded in the international speleology community (the study of cave exploration), and has previously participated in rescue missions.
He was co-leading an expedition to find and map a new passage into the Turkish Cave, the third deepest cave in the country when he fell ill.
Dickey’s family said in a statement, “Mark is strong, but he needed his cave mates, including doctors of course, to allow a terrifying, devastating situation to turn into a positive,” NBC News reported.
Rescue operations in caves deeper than 1,000 meters are relatively uncommon.
In 2014, a man was evacuated from the Rising Cave, which is 1,148 meters (3,766 feet) deep, in Bavaria, Germany. About 728 people participated in the operation, which took 11 days.
