WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:02.482 A cave in San Antonio, Texas. 00:00:03.282 --> 00:00:09.350 About three hundred and fifty feet from the entrance, there is a hole in the floor. A young woman is in it. 00:00:10.150 --> 00:00:15.061 Her torso is stuck. She can't go on down. She can't climb back up. 00:00:15.861 --> 00:00:21.431 Beside her, firefighters are breaking the rock with pneumatic hammers. Twenty minutes at a time. 00:00:22.231 --> 00:00:23.710 It will take more than ten hours. 00:00:25.510 --> 00:00:34.627 This is Caving Stories: true stories of cave rescue and survival. Today, Robber Baron Cave, and the passage called the Hole in the Floor. 00:00:36.427 --> 00:00:39.473 Robber Baron Cave is in San Antonio, Texas. 00:00:40.273 --> 00:00:46.726 On the eighth of March, twenty eighteen, a group went into it on a school trip. Experienced cavers were guiding them. 00:00:47.526 --> 00:00:51.046 One of the group was a high school student. She was eighteen. 00:00:51.846 --> 00:00:58.455 About three hundred and fifty feet from the entrance, the group came to a passage with a name. The Hole in the Floor. 00:01:00.255 --> 00:01:06.979 It is what it sounds like. A hole in the floor of the cave, that drops about five feet, down to another level. 00:01:07.779 --> 00:01:19.644 But it is not a straight drop. In the news reports, a man named Jon Ranzau described it. The hole has a twist, he said. It is more oval than round. And that makes it harder to get through. 00:01:20.444 --> 00:01:22.047 She started climbing down into it. 00:01:22.847 --> 00:01:24.043 And her torso got stuck. 00:01:25.843 --> 00:01:28.867 The experienced cavers with the group tried to get her free. 00:01:29.667 --> 00:01:30.805 They tried for about an hour. 00:01:31.605 --> 00:01:32.561 Then they called for help. 00:01:33.361 --> 00:01:37.230 The call went to the San Antonio Fire Department, and its technical rescue team. 00:01:39.030 --> 00:01:40.980 The rescuers set out to make the hole bigger. 00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:46.206 They brought pneumatic hammers into the cave, and chipped away at the rock right beside her. 00:01:47.006 --> 00:01:50.717 About seventy people worked on the rescue, in shifts of twenty minutes. 00:01:51.517 --> 00:01:56.520 At the hole itself, about eleven firefighters took turns, in groups of three or four. 00:01:57.320 --> 00:02:00.831 And through all of it, according to the reports, she stayed calm. 00:02:01.631 --> 00:02:05.523 She was conscious. Lucid. In good spirits. 00:02:07.323 --> 00:02:10.296 When the hole was wide enough, they got her into a harness. 00:02:11.097 --> 00:02:13.402 They braced her feet, so she would not slip. 00:02:14.202 --> 00:02:15.143 And she came loose. 00:02:15.943 --> 00:02:21.787 According to FireRescue1, these were her words. Oh my gosh. I can move. 00:02:22.587 --> 00:02:24.473 She had been stuck for more than ten hours. 00:02:25.273 --> 00:02:30.197 She did not have a single injury. She went to the hospital anyway, as a precaution. 00:02:31.997 --> 00:02:37.755 This story also circulates online, as a short video. Some of it goes beyond the record. 00:02:38.555 --> 00:02:51.112 It begins with a bet. Someone tells her she can't fit through, and she sets out to prove them wrong. No report mentions a bet. The reports say she was going down the passage on a guided trip, with experienced cavers. 00:02:51.912 --> 00:02:58.739 It shows her crawling into a tight gap. The reports say she was climbing down, into a hole in the floor. 00:02:59.539 --> 00:03:11.299 It says the rock pressed into her hips, and that her right leg was twisted at an unnatural angle. No report mentions her leg. What got stuck was her torso. And every report says she was not hurt. 00:03:12.099 --> 00:03:17.278 It says her screams echoed through the cave. The reports describe her as calm. 00:03:18.078 --> 00:03:24.709 It says the others tried for two hours before help came. The reports say they tried for about an hour, and then called. 00:03:25.509 --> 00:03:32.263 Everything in this episode comes from the news reports on the rescue, and from what the San Antonio Fire Department told reporters. 00:03:34.063 --> 00:03:36.307 The Hole in the Floor drops about five feet. 00:03:37.107 --> 00:03:41.117 It took about seventy people, and more than ten hours, to get her out of it. 00:03:44.117 --> 00:03:53.886 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.