In the night between Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th December, the thirty-two year old speleologist Ottavia Piana she was trapped inside the cave Bueno Fontenonear Lake Iseo in the province of Bergamo, after being injured due to a fall from a height of 5 meters which caused trauma to her legs, chest and face. At the moment Piana is alert and collaborative, the situation is under control and the teams of National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps (CNSAS) intervened promptly, attending to the wound and starting the long rescue operations. In fact, we must keep in mind that in this type of environment the rescue not only is it complex but it also involves a large number of rescuers. Unfortunately, the same speleologist was injured in the abyss of Bueno Fonteno during an exploratory activity carried out in the summer of 2023, always within the “Sebino project“, whose objective is the mapping of this dense and intricate network of underground tunnels. Following that accident it took 48 hours to bring her to safety.
What happened to speleologist Ottavia Piana
The speleologist Piana, a member of the CAI, was in an area at the time of the accident 400 meters deep in a still unexplored area, approximately 6 hours walk from the entrance. The alarm was raised around 10.30pm Of Saturday 14th and CNSAS teams from all over northern Italy immediately rushed to the scene. At 1.30pm on Sunday 15th the injured speleologist was transported to a point in the cave where a temporary base camp heated which allowed the necessary medical care to be provided. At 6pm activities began to bring the speleologist out of the cave and, in particular, small explosive charges were used to widen a narrow passage hundreds of meters long and allow the passage of the stretcher.
The latest information we have available is that at 8:00 this morning the narrowest section had not yet been overcome: let’s keep in mind that these are operations extremely complex which can last tens of hours, or even entire days in the most extreme cases.
Why is it so difficult to rescue the injured in a cave
The underground environment is extremely complex to manage in case of emergency.
The first problem – easy enough to understand – is the fact that spaces are extremely reduced: not only this hinders the passage of rescuers but, as in this case, even the simple passage of a stretcher can become one great challenge. Precisely for this reason, in fact, there are CNSAS technicians who are authorized to dispose small explosive charges, so as to open passages but without affecting the load-bearing structure of the tunnel.
Managing a rescue of this type also requires an enormous amount of technicians, both on site and on the surface: in today’s case we are talking about over 100 professionals involved. This number is linked to the fact that numerous shifts are necessary, given that the movement of the injured person towards the outside it can take from a few dozen hours to several days. Since these are long and variable times, in the case of wounds of a certain size it is best to assist the injured person on site, as well as to avoid possible infections linked to the type of environment.
To all this we also add a final point, that is, that underground cavity systems such as the Bueno Fonteno abyss have a constant temperature of approximately 8°Cand therefore the timely intervention of emergency services is essential to avoid hypothermia.
The characteristics of the Bueno Fonteno cave
THE’abyss of Bueno Fonteno is located in the area of Western Sebino, a karst area near the Lake Iseo rich in caves which for years has been one of the most popular destinations for speleologists in the area.
From a geological point of view this translates into a high presence of limestone rocks which, over time, have been eroded by water, giving rise to enormous systems of underground cavities. Among these, one of the most famous is theBueno Fonteno abyssthe development of which is known to date exceeds 21 kmfor a total height difference of approximately 560 metres.
As anticipated, the cave is largely still unexplored, and precisely for this reason the Sebino Project aims to map it, as clearly visible from the 3D model of the tunnels below.
