Rescue Of Croton Researcher From Turkish Cave Expected To Take Days

TURKEY — Efforts to rescue international caving expert and researcher Mark Dickey from a southern Turkey cave after he became deathly ill last week continued Saturday, a tedious process officials said could potentially take days.

Dickey, an experienced caver from Croton-on-Hudson, was on an expedition with a handful of others in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains on Aug. 31 when he "suddenly became ill" with gastrointestinal bleeding and vomiting, and his condition rapidly worsened, according to the New Jersey Initial Response Team, where Dickey serves as chief.

The 40-year-old was 3,412 feet under the ground in a complex cave system, said the NJ-IRT. The expansive cave is the third-deepest in the country.

Rescuers from across Europe rushed to the cave to help Dickey and to extract him, including one Hungarian doctor who treated him inside the cave on Sept. 3. Doctors gave Dickey IV fluids and 4 liters of blood inside the cave, officials said. Teams comprised of a doctor and three or four others take turns staying with the American at all times.

In an update Saturday, an official with a U.S. National Cave Rescue Commission said Dickey was in "stable but fragile condition."

Officials said it could take days to bring Dickey to the surface since rescuers anticipate he will have to stop and rest frequently at camps set up along the way as they pull his stretcher through the narrow passages.

“This afternoon, the operation to move him from his camp at 1040 meters to the camp at 700 meters began,” Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate, AFAD, told The Associated Press.

About 190 personnel from eight countries were assisting in the rescue effort, including doctors, paramedics and experienced cavers, Mersin Gov. Ali Hamza Pehlivan told media on Saturday. He said 153 of them were search and rescue experts.

Earlier this week, Dickey was able to send a video message to the surface that was shared by Turkey's communications directorate, the Independent reported.

In the video, Dickey thanked everyone. "I was very close to the edge," he said. "I'm going to need an awful lot of help to get out of here.

"The caving world is a really tight-knit group and it's amazing to see how many people have responded."

Dickey "is a well-known figure in the international speleological community, a highly trained caver, and a cave rescuer himself," officials of the European Cave Rescue Association wrote in a fundraising appeal. "He has participated in caving expeditions in many karst areas of the world for many years. In addition to his activities as a speleologist, he is also the secretary of the ECRA medical committee and an instructor for cave rescue organizations in the USA."

A GoFundMe page started in Croton to assist the international rescue teams has raised $56,000 of a $100,000 goal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.