Cave diver survives 60 hours in air pocket
Man had no idea if friend reached surface for help
Trapped in the lonely darkness of an underwater cave, Xisco Gracia was clinging to life, but could only think about how he sent his friend to a sure death.
Time was running out for Gracia. Stranded, and with his oxygen supply depleted, the only reason he was still alive 40 metres underground was because he miraculously found an air pocket within its confines.
But the air that Gracia, 55, breathed in was heavy with carbon dioxide and the experienced speleologist and university professor began to hallucinate.
He lost track of how long he’d been there. It must’ve been at least five days, he thought. The glowing bubbles of light in the distance surely meant rescue was near until he realized they were only desolating mirages.
Losing hope, Gracia thought Guillem Mascaro, his diving partner — and his one chance for rescue — wasn’t able to make it back to the surface.
“In the end, I thought they wouldn’t find me because Guillem couldn’t get out,” Gracia told Diario de Mallorca in Spanish. “He didn’t know the caves well and I was scared he would end up without air.”
Gracia and Mascaro were deep underwater, researching the topography of the Cova de sa Piqueta in Manacor, Spain, when their guide wire snapped on the edge of a jagged rock. Gracia scrambled to find the other end of the guide wire so he could perform an emergency procedure to fix it.
By the time Gracia was able to connect the two ends, there was not enough oxygen left to bring both he and Mascaro to make the return trip.
Running out of time and oxygen, the two turned back and found a cavity in the cave that was 100 metres long and 40 metres wide. After he gave his remaining oxygen to Mascaro and sent him to the surface, Gracia would stay in this pocket for 60 hours, surviving only by drinking from a thin puddle of murky water before a daring rescue on Monday.
“We are used to being alone, but to stay in a pocket without being able to leave and nobody finding you is a diver’s worst nightmare,” Gracia said.
Starved and breathing in an unhealthy amount of carbon dioxide, Gracia had reason to be frightened.
The speleologist couldn’t sleep inside the cave because of the poor air quality and extreme humidity. Exerting himself would only force him to breathe more of it in. But the area in the pocket Mascaro had left him in was uncomfortable and wet. To avoid hypothermia, Gracia decided he had no choice but to risk climbing the jagged rocks nearby until he found a flat site near a thin pool of water.
There, it was always dark. Gracia insisted on only using the battery from his dying flashlights to urinate or follow a path of markers he laid down to his water source.
The water was “brackish, but quite sweet,” he said.
This water may have been keeping him alive, but it is also what kept him languishing underground.
While Gracia struggled to cope with his new surroundings, Mascaro made it to the surface and a rescue operation led by the civil police was underway.
Gracia wasn’t exactly lost, Mascaro said. He knew where his friend was, but rescue divers could not get to him on Sunday because of the opaque water. The emergency divers could not see where they were swimming in the thick water and were only able to travel 100 metres before they feared getting lost within an underground labyrinth of tunnels.
Still, they thought they found Gracia on Sunday and drilled a hole into the cave wall so they could hand him oxygen and food. But they failed to reach him.
From the cavity, Gracia thought he could hear what sounded like a generator. When its sounds stopped echoing in the cave walls, he thought the search had been abandoned for good.
Putting off the search because of the lack of visibility, the rescue team, which consisted of more than 60 people, waited 15 hours before trying again. With a clear path, two divers were finally able to find Gracia — 900 metres from the cave’s entrance.
When they came faceto-face, Gracia hugged and kissed Bernat Clamor, one of the divers that found him.
To get back to the surface, an exhausted Gracia had to swim for an hour and a half. Breathing in oxygen from the canisters Clamor brought along was like “charging the batteries,” he said.
Enrique Ballesteros, a member of the civil police’s underwater task force, told El Mundo the decision to send Mascaro alone to the surface saved Gracia’s life.
“I think they made the right decisions and that’s why (Gracia) is still with us,” Enrique Ballesteros, a member of the civil police’s underwater task force, told El Mundo.
“They could have tried to stretch out the remaining oxygen, but surely that would’ve been suicide and they would have both died.”
Video taken by the civil police shows the rescue team pulling him back to the surface from the cave’s depths. With the help of two crew members, Gracia was able to walk back to the surface on his two feet on Monday around midnight.
After a short stay in the hospital, Gracia is ready for another dive.
Mascaro never had any doubts his partner would survive the gruelling ordeal.
“There’s only one Xisco,” he said.
IN THE END, I THOUGHT THEY WOULDN’T FIND ME BECAUSE GUILLEM COULDN’T GET OUT. — XISCO GRACIA