RESCUED TOO LATE

Hokitika Guardian, 18 February 1925, Page 3

RESCUED TOO LATE

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION NEW YORK, February IG. A message from Cave City in Kentuck, states that, after being imprisoned in a cave for seventeen days, the body of Floyd Collins, a local explorer, was reached by rescuers to-day. Collins was trapped on January 31, when a boulder fell, pinning him by the foot (luring his explorations. The victim was discovered two days later. 'Thereupon relatives and friends supplied him with food and water, and installed electric wires, placing lamps about his body to provdc heat. Frenzied attempts at rescue were rendered extremely difficult, owing to the narrowness of the passage, which is only wide enough for one person, necessitating the scooping of earth and stone, and passing it back from man to man to the entrance. However, at the end of five days, the exhausted rescuers reached Collins, and were just ready to prepare to remove him, when rocks and earth fell between them and the injured man, cutting him off entirely, and rendering further efforts at his release through the passage useless.

The interest in the prisoner now rose to fever heat. The Governor of Kentucky, with State and Federal officials and engineers, assumed direction of the rescue work, while thousands of minors and curiosity seekers gathered about the spot and doctors waited with an ambulance.

‘Engineers were compelled to sink a seventy feet shaft from the surface of the hill over the cave. This task, owing to continual obstacles, such as the rock formation, floods and landslide occupied ten days, durng which Collins was without food or water.

Radio tests proved that he was still breathing several days after he was last seen, but these ultimately failed, Owing to the continued delays, and excitement of the populace, the wild est stories came to he circulated, one claiming that the whole imprisonment was faked to get publicity. This was 'quickly disposed of. When the rescuers reached Collins he had been dead for some days.