Rescuers blast open passages to rescue sick US explorer from cave in Turkey

ISTANBUL — Efforts to extract an American explorer who became ill more than 3,400 feet underground in a cave in southern Turkey expanded Friday, as international rescue teams installed communications equipment and blasted open narrow areas to allow the passage of a stretcher, officials involved in the rescue said.

The caver, Mark Dickey, 40, was part of an expedition exploring the Morca cave in southern Turkey when he suddenly suffered from abdominal bleeding last week. Unable to communicate from underground, one of his colleagues made the arduous, hourslong climb to the surface and sounded the alarm last Saturday.

In the days since, more than 180 people from eight countries, including Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the United States, have joined the rescue effort, many of them camped out near the cave’s opening in a remote part of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey — and up and down the cave itself.

Dickey’s medical condition and the depth and confines of the cave will make his rescue a highly complicated logistical feat.

“This is one of the most difficult cave rescue operations in the world,” Recep Salci, head of the rescue department for Turkey’s national disaster relief organization, said in a phone interview Friday.

Helicopters have airlifted supplies, including food, water, medicine and blood, to the mouth of the cave, where cavers must carry them down on ropes. To facilitate communication, a phone line has been run down the cave, and rescuers from Croatia are installing a wireless texting system called Cave-Link as a backup.