WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:02.557 A Sunday in July, in Pennsylvania. 00:00:03.357 --> 00:00:08.390 Inside a cave, three people turn back toward the way out. They smell smoke. 00:00:09.190 --> 00:00:15.608 The way out is a steel pipe, three feet wide, that runs under an interstate highway. There is no other. 00:00:16.408 --> 00:00:17.552 And the pipe is on fire. 00:00:18.352 --> 00:00:20.388 One of the three starts to crawl into it. 00:00:22.188 --> 00:00:32.594 This is Caving Stories: true stories of cave rescue and survival. Today, Carnegie Cave, and the pipe that caught fire. This story ends in a death. 00:00:34.394 --> 00:00:40.608 Carnegie Cave is near the village of Cleversburg, in Southampton Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. 00:00:41.408 --> 00:00:43.693 You don't walk into it. You crawl. 00:00:44.493 --> 00:00:54.260 The only entrance is a drain pipe. It is made of steel, it is thirty-six inches across, and it is a hundred and fifty feet long. It passes under Interstate eighty-one. 00:00:55.060 --> 00:00:57.273 And the inside of the pipe is lined with tar. 00:00:59.073 --> 00:01:06.321 On Sunday, the ninth of July, nineteen sixty-seven, three people went to Carnegie Cave. One of them was named Charles. 00:01:07.121 --> 00:01:12.084 All three were inexperienced. Only one of them had been caving before, a few times. 00:01:12.884 --> 00:01:16.922 When they got there, another group was coming out of the cave. Novice cavers too. 00:01:17.722 --> 00:01:21.943 Someone in that group left two candles burning, in the middle of the drain pipe. 00:01:22.743 --> 00:01:38.073 The three passed the candles on their way in. The accident report says they did not disturb them. It also says it is possible that one of them kicked over one of the candles, or both, on the way into the cave. Possible. The report does not say it happened. 00:01:39.873 --> 00:01:41.852 They were inside for about fifteen minutes. 00:01:42.652 --> 00:01:45.458 Then they started back. And they smelled smoke. 00:01:46.258 --> 00:01:54.604 When they reached the pipe, they saw, in the words of the report, a wall of fire, blazing before them, in their only way out of the cave. 00:01:55.404 --> 00:02:03.278 The tar lining had caught. According to the fire department, the fire burned along a stretch of pipe about twenty-five to thirty feet long. 00:02:04.078 --> 00:02:07.560 Behind them, the cave. In front of them, the fire. 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:13.867 The report uses one word for what happened to Charles next. Terrorized. 00:02:14.667 --> 00:02:17.508 He started crawling through the pipe, into the flames. 00:02:18.308 --> 00:02:21.087 The other two pleaded with him. They warned him not to go. 00:02:21.887 --> 00:02:22.497 He kept going. 00:02:23.297 --> 00:02:27.232 Outside, a nearby resident saw black smoke pouring from the pipe. 00:02:28.032 --> 00:02:32.918 Then Charles came out of it. He fell to the ground. His clothes were on fire. 00:02:33.718 --> 00:02:42.891 The Shippensburg fire department was alerted at three forty-two in the afternoon. Local police and firefighters arrived quickly, and Charles was rushed to a hospital. 00:02:44.691 --> 00:02:46.392 The other two did not follow him. 00:02:47.192 --> 00:02:52.654 They went back, as far into the main part of the cave as they could go. And they waited for help. 00:02:53.454 --> 00:03:02.024 Nobody could go into the pipe until the fire was out. When it was, the firefighters laid boards over the hot tar, to protect the rescuers crawling through. 00:03:02.824 --> 00:03:15.367 By then, the call had brought in more than one company. The Vigilant Hose Company of Shippensburg. The Cumberland Valley Ambulance. West End Fire and Rescue. And the rescue squad of the Friendship Fire Company, from Chambersburg. 00:03:16.167 --> 00:03:24.614 Firemen and cavers went in. The fire department names the search team: Tom Jackson, John Nickles, Mike Goodhart, and Fred Paulsgrove. 00:03:25.414 --> 00:03:30.190 In some places, the fire department wrote, the water on the floor of the cave was knee-deep. 00:03:30.990 --> 00:03:33.420 The search took an hour and forty-five minutes. 00:03:34.220 --> 00:03:40.048 They found the two on a ledge, on an upper level of the cave, about eighteen hundred feet from the entrance. 00:03:40.848 --> 00:03:42.897 They were safe. Unharmed. 00:03:43.697 --> 00:03:49.364 They were brought out at twelve minutes past six in the evening. One firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation. 00:03:51.164 --> 00:03:55.745 All three were taken to the hospital in Chambersburg. One of them was in critical condition. 00:03:56.545 --> 00:04:04.224 Charles had second and third degree burns over fifty-nine percent of his body. He was moved to Temple University Hospital, in Philadelphia. 00:04:05.024 --> 00:04:08.628 He died on the twelfth of July. Three days after the fire. 00:04:09.428 --> 00:04:10.621 His name was Charles Richter. 00:04:12.421 --> 00:04:17.960 This story circulates online as a short video, in parts. Some of it goes beyond the record. 00:04:18.760 --> 00:04:23.131 It says his two friends could hear him screaming in the pipe. That is not in the report. 00:04:23.931 --> 00:04:37.809 It says the smoke burned his airway, and that he died of infection and organ failure. The report says he died from second and third degree burns, over fifty-nine percent of his body. It says nothing about his airway, or about an infection. 00:04:38.609 --> 00:04:51.815 It says the two who stayed were calm, that they chose the place where the air was freshest, and that they kept still to save oxygen. The report says only that they went as far back into the main part of the cave as they could, and waited for help. 00:04:52.615 --> 00:04:57.339 It says Charles told the rescuers where to find the other two. That is not in the report either. 00:04:58.139 --> 00:05:06.905 It says the fire burned on until later that night. The fire department's account has the two brought out of the cave at six twelve that evening, after the fire was out. 00:05:07.705 --> 00:05:19.710 Everything in this episode comes from the accident report of the National Speleological Society, published in nineteen seventy-four from a caving club newsletter of that summer, and from the account of the Shippensburg fire department. 00:05:20.510 --> 00:05:29.246 The report ends with an analysis. It says it is possible that, if someone with more experience had been there, Charles could have been stopped from going into the fire. 00:05:31.046 --> 00:05:33.074 And there is one thing the report never says. 00:05:33.874 --> 00:05:34.790 Who lit the candles. 00:05:35.590 --> 00:05:39.023 Only that someone left them burning, in the middle of the only way out. 00:05:42.023 --> 00:05:51.791 The sources for this episode are in the show notes. This was Caving Stories. If this one stayed with you, follow the show in your podcast app, so the next case comes to you.