Clare climber’s cliff-hanging account of cave rescue

A DOOLIN-BASED expert rock climber has recalled how a team drilled around 120 bolts along the wall of a sea cave to rescue a man that had been trapped for almost 22 hours.

The man was forced to remain on a ledge after a freak wave washed him into a cave at Downpatrick Head on the Mayo coast beyond Killala at 6pm on Saturday, September 17.

Former Doolin Coast Guard volunteer, Conor McGrath said, “It was probably the most technical rescue ever undertaken in my 40 years’ experience. To rescue the man alive after such a long time was a great bonus. It was a very good result for all the team.”

Mr McGrath recalled a few people were swimming and climbing along the coast when they were washed off a ledge into the water around 5.30pm.

The RNLI Lifeboat was tasked to the scene after a woman was rescued by kayakers, but a Polish man in his forties was swept around Downpatrick Head and washed into a cave.

RNLI volunteers could see the man in the cave but couldn’t get to him because the swell was too high.

Coast Guard teams from Killala, Ballyglass, and a cliff climbing team from Achill were also tasked but they couldn’t get into rescue him.

The emergency operation involved the Coast Guard, gardai, the garda sub aqua unit, firefighters, the local Civil Defence.

Around midnight, the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation, which was set up in 1961, was tasked to help in the operation.

Four people from Clare including John Sweeney, Adam Deyeto, Terry Casserley and Brian and another four rescue volunteers from Fermanagh examined the scene and realised it was going to be a bigger operation than initially envisaged.

At 5am, Mr McGrath was contacted and asked to bring additional equipment. He travelled up to Downpatrick with Jim Warny, a Belgian national, now living in Ennis who is an expert cave diver that played a prominent role in the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a deep cave in Northern Thailand in July 2018.

They arrived at Downpatrick Head around 8.30am where they learned a garda diver had gone near the sea cave but established there was no safe method to rescue the casualty.

Specialist cave rescuers were given the sole responsibility of rescuing the man at around 9am.

“The rock is very similar to the Cliffs of Moher and is quite unstable. It was not ideal for anchoring. We had to drill a hole in the rock, put in anchors and abseil down in a zig zag fashion to avoid loose rock and killing one another.

“It was a delicate operation to descend the 45 metre cliff into the cafe mouth. We eventually got to the cafe mouth and found a horizontal band of sound sandstone. We decided to bolt along that sandstone until we reached the casualty.

“Every metre we had to put in a special removable rescue bolt from which we could be suspended from and then we moved to the next bolt. We put in 120 bolts in total, which was a big operation.

“We started drilling holes at 9am and continued until 4pm,” he recalled.

In total there was a team of about 20 people and ten were involved in the drilling.

Warny, who had a wetsuit in case the casualty needed to get into the water, made his way to the man who was taken via a rope to a ledge to safety at around 5.30pm.

Rescuers discovered there was a parallel cave and a window connecting the two caves, which was rigged to allow him enter the window into another cave where it was possible to walk around.

Luckily the man was wearing a wet suit but had lost one of his sea socks. A Coast Guard helicopter took the man to Sligo University Hospital for medical assessment after he was provided with food and water.

The Ballyglass Lifeboat had shone a light into the sea cave every 30 minutes to let the casualty know help was on the way.

Mr McGrath, who is a member of ICRO since 1978, has built up a wealth of experience from his time in Doolin Coast Guard as well as his work for Work at Height in technical rescue and industrial search and rescue.

He does a lot of work for wind farm companies on wind turbines, having been involved in mountain and cave rescue since the mid seventies.

He has been involved in several major cave rescue operations including finding 12 students who got lost in Pollnagollum cave outside Lisdoonvarna and had to be lifted one by one about 20 years ago.