Tragedy Strikes

Was Jones ever actually free from the crevice?

"I would like to clear up one thing however. Several news outlets have reported that John was "free" and then the rigging failed, sending him back to where he started. This is incorrect. When the redirect popped, John was still several hours from being 'free'. I estimate he was probably 2 hours of hauling and squeezing from where he would have been able to sit up."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Cavechat Forum) 

"Unfortunately, during the day, one of the rescuers had exited the cave and told the press that John was nearly free and the team would have him out in a couple of hours. It was broadcast over television news that John was free and on his way out. Only about an hour later, the rigging failed. Thus it was reported in many media outlets across the U.S. that John had been freed, and then the rigging failure caused him to fall all the way back to where he started. Nothing could have been further from the truth." 

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Incident Report) 

"Rescuers briefly pulled him out of the crevice using a pulley system and ropes tied to his feet, but he slipped back in after an anchor broke free of the cave wall."

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune) 

"He was never free. They managed to pull him back out a little bit, enough to get access to his feet. There was still a long way to go to get him out. They did get an IV started in his foot. The single anchor did fail, and he did fall a small distance back down."

— RockMonkey, Cave Rescue Relative (RME4x4 Forum)

What exactly went wrong with the final rescue effort?

"At one point in the process, Ryan Shurtz was in the forward rescuer position, manipulating John’s legs and encouraging him to help. Ryan was unfortunately in the zone of entrapment underneath the final deviation in the haul line, because he had nowhere else to work. The natural bridge that the final deviation was rigged to had a sharp back edge that had been slowly cutting through the 11mm rope anchoring the pulleys there. During a haul, the rope snapped, sending steel carabiners and rescue pulleys into Ryan’s face with incredible force. This impact knocked him out, partially severed his tongue, cut his face badly, and caused a small concussion. When Ryan came to, he was helped out of the crawl to the haul team area. He was cleaned up a little by the medics on scene, and then exited the cave under his own power to seek hospital care. Ryan made a full recovery, with some scars to show for it. He is very fortunate not to have been blinded or killed by the impact. Only about an hour later, the rigging failed.

The rigging failure also dropped John about a foot. The drop did not injure him further, but effectively ended any hope of rescue as his condition was already severely declining. Extracting Ryan, re-rigging the deviation with a bolt anchor, and getting the team back in position took over an hour. During this time, John became unresponsive. As a result, when the haul resumed, he was no longer able to help the rescuers with his upward progress. The haul was pulling him upward into a tight spot, much like trying to push a cork into an upturned bottle."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Incident Report)

"There was no bolt or webbing at the final redirect. No bolt pulled out, no rock crumbled, and no webbing broke. One reason there is so much confusion on this is because only about six people actually made it to this spot. I don’t even know who originally rigged it. Dave Shurtz, who eventually replaced it with a bolt, told me that the original rigging was a short length of 11mm rope tied around a jug handle in the ceiling. It was doubled around the handle. The back of the handle had a sharp edge and actually cut through the rope anchor, sending the pulleys into Ryan’s face."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Cavechat Forum)

"The haul systems ran through a twisting passage, requiring pulleyed redirects at each corner, four in all. As far as I can tell, the last one was set up on a natural anchor. It was very near the patient, one bend beyond where I could fit. I believe it was the anchor itself that blew, not the rope or cord as reported. The rescuer was actually hit in the face with two rescue pulleys and two carabiners.

While this setback was definitely the turning point of the rescue, John probably lost about two feet of progress as a result. Rescuers had already moved him a ways up the passage in the 15 or so hours before this. He was still a long way from being free, even without the blowout. Once the rigging was rebuilt with better anchors, by this time John was too exhausted to help us, rendering the setup useless. We were hauling him into a tight spot, with only his feet visible. He was head-down for 24 hours, with no way to turn him, and the clock beat us."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Cavechat Forum)

"Yeah the rigging failure is still one of the hardest things to get good info on. I was under the impression that the rock broke until I went caving with Dave Shurtz back in March or so. He told me about the rope getting cut then. It is ironic, because rope failure is what was originally reported on TV. However, the news was talking about main line failure, which certainly did not happen. The rigging failure was essentially a communication failure. Those designing and modifying the haul system did not know the condition of this anchor. All the other ones had been replaced with bolts, this one was assumed to be a bolt as well, at least by me. 

I never made it that close to John. Too bad you don't have a hard copy of the Tribune, there is actually a pretty decent schematic [the rescue diagram] in the article. Unlike what you'll see here, the passage continues beyond John, and the redirect in question is shown wrong. The main line did not go through the jug handle. How much force was applied to it? Lots. Enough to cut an 11mm rope in half on a pointy rock."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Cavechat Forum)

"I briefed about 20 law enforcement and other emergency services leaders, then was sent to give an update to the press. About the time I was telling them that things were going great and we might have him out in a few hours, a piece of gear failed and everything went sour. I heard three different accounts of which piece broke. At first I heard that a prussik failed (which was capturing any progress we made on raising the ropes) but it couldn’t have been that because the other rope would have held the load. I also heard that a cam stuck in a crack and a bolt drilled into the rock had failed. Either way, it was due to the clayish-rock of the cave. 

A piece of gear caught a rescuer on the face and paramedics gave him stitches before he exited the cave. A delay was caused in having to get that rescuer out from deep within the narrow tube, having to replace the blown piece, and I can only imagine what else went on at that time. It surely wasn’t very encouraging for John, either, and neither was his difficulty breathing that ensued. By midnight, Brandon Kowallis (an extremely highly-respected local caver) crawled near enough to John to verify that he had passed away. 

For days afterward, I reviewed the whole mission, wishing we’d have done this tiny detail differently or done that a little sooner. But it’s no use second guessing things. We did our best. Had one of our bolts failed? Dave and I discussed where to drill, trying to stay clear of cracks that might make the placement weaker. I asked him if the rock had felt solid the entire way in as he drilled his hole and he affirmed that it had. My placement also felt solid all the way in. I don’t think our bolts failed, as various factors and other rescuers’ opinions tell me it as a cam lower down, but the uncertainty plagued me for two or three days afterward."

— Shaun Roundy, Cave Rescue (Nutty Putty Site)

"Ryan tried to ready John for what was about to happen. 'OK, John. I need your help, I need you to make sure you are pushing with your hands. I’m going to push you this way.' In the pit, eight people worked as one. And John’s body lifted out of the crevice. With each tug, he moved a little farther. Then his feet hit the low ceiling. He screamed. Ryan yelled for the teams to lower him, to give him a rest. After about 20 minutes, Ryan raised his voice to yell. 'Haul!' he said. The rope moved. John inched upward. Ryan began to hope. Against the sheer impossibility of it all, John might get out. Then the world exploded in a blast of pain. Ryan screamed. He blacked out. When he came to, blood was everywhere. His jaw felt broken, and his eye was swelling. Under the pressure of John’s body and the crew’s pulling, the stone arch had shattered and the rope tied around it had broken, sending a heavy metal carabiner straight at Ryan’s face. But where was John? The trapped man had slid back into the hole and landed on his head again, but didn’t seem worse than before. Back at the pit, the eight people pulling the rope crashed to the ground when it went slack. 

Dave reluctantly crawled in. 'John, are you OK?' Dave asked. 'I’m going to die right here. I’m not going to come out of here, am I?' Then John fell silent, and his breathing slowed. While he waited for a drill to make a new pulley hole, Dave tried to wrap a rope around John’s waist. He lowered himself into the wider end of the crack, but it was too tight to work the rope all the way around John. He asked John to suck his stomach in, but he didn’t respond. Then it was Dave who was stuck. It took him 15 minutes to crawl out of the crack. When he got the drill, Dave stood in the crack next to John and pointed up, drilling madly, struggling in the damp, humid conditions. He tried to put the pulley in and found the hole was too small. He drilled a second hole and pushed the pulley in. He was exhausted. Fighting a black depression, he crawled back out of the hole, stopping every few minutes so he wouldn’t vomit."

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune)

"John became trapped in the cave around 9 pm Tuesday night. He struggled for release and for life for 27 hours. Rescue workers estimated that an average amount of time for a person to have lasted under those conditions would have been 8 hours.

Later Wednesday night we received word from Emily that the rescue team had gotten John back from the “L” shaped drop off that held him prisoner for nearly 24 hours. In that position on a still tight but more level shelf, he was given some Gatorade and was revived a bit.  Ryan and his father, David Shurtz with 29 years of rescue experience, determined their best and last remaining option was for Ryan to attempt to slide past John then help push him while others pulled on the rope attached to his feet. 

Seconds before Ryan began to move into position the rope holding the carabineer to the wall of the cave snapped sending the carabineer into the joint of Ryan’s right eye and nose. He almost bit his tongue off. Blood was shooting everywhere. His face took a pounding on the cave wall. When we spoke with Ryan on Saturday he had a black eye, many stitches in his tongue, and had been eating through a straw. The abrasions and swelling looked like someone had smashed his face into a cave wall. 

With the tension off the rope, John helplessly slid back into where he had come from with legs and arms that wouldn’t respond to him anymore, hitting his head in the fall. John repeatedly called out, “Ryan, are you alright? He could tell Ryan was now in trouble and had been seriously hurt. Ryan assured him he would be alright. A few minutes later John slipped into unconsciousness and passed away. 

Had Ryan moved into position and been either at John’s side, or behind him to help push, they both would have likely been lost. For Ryan to have decided to take the risk was heroic. Ryan said the time they spent together changed his life. Ryan changed our life as well. He was there giving comfort, aid, and support to the man we all love. Ryan brought back the most precious words a wife, daughter, and family can hear, those of John's undying devotion and love. We will be forever grateful to Ryan for all that he did, and desired to accomplish.

Near the end John knew he wasn’t going to make it. He told Ryan to tell Emily how much he loved her and their family and that he would be there for the birth of their baby. Ryan said of course he would be there, because they would get him out. John insisted, 'no, but tell Emily I’ll be there when the baby is born!' We feel certain he will be. Perhaps they are already spending time together."

— Bishop and Momma Pete, John Jones in-laws (Cavechat Forum)

"I'm not sure of the next part, but it appears that when John's feet reached the pulley, the rope was retied around his knees to get a lower purchase. It was during this second attempt to lift him higher that the rigging broke and John slipped back down. That essentially ended the rescue because John was no longer able to assist. 

Much discussion and criticism has been made at what has been related as failure of the rock where the bolt was installed. I saw the live, real-time, tele-broadcast where the Utah County sheriff went to great pains to explain that no equipment failed; it was the result of the rock crumbling and the whole installation including the bolt came off the wall. This was repeated several times and quoted in the newspapers. If you go back early in the beginning of this thread you will even find that several people quote the newspapers about the rock failure, not an equipment failure. 

HOWEVER... About 3 months after the 'rescue' I attended the regular Salt Lake Grotto meeting and sat across a table from Ryan Shurtz, the rescuer who was with John during the failure and got hit hard in the face with a couple of carabiners. My question to Ryan was to have him describe how the rock crumbled without instantly releasing the bolt. His answer was surprising, "It never happened." He insisted that a piece of webbing broke. At first I was sure we were talking about two different things, but on the third go round, he was most adamant that the failure that dropped John back down the hole was a webbing failure. I couldn't argue because he is the one that got clobbered and should know. He maintained that the bolt is still solidly in the wall and the limestone around it is intact. I'm not going to speculate why the sheriff said what he did."

— Dale Green, Nutty Putty Discoverer (Cavechat Forum)

"Rescuers bolted a pulley system into the rock for more leverage. That moved Jones a little ways, until a bolt failed, according to Sgt. Spencer Cannon of the Utah County Sheriff's Office. 'A roof anchor gave way, causing him to fall back down into the area where he had been stuck previously,' Cannon said. It's not known if that setback contributed to Jones' death." 

— John Hollenhorst and Nicole Gonzales (KSL News)

"Back in the cave, each new pulley helped inch John out of his dark prison. The team pulled. They pulled again. But John’s feet hit the tunnel’s low ceiling. With his heart struggling to pump blood into his legs, the contact made him scream in pain. The rescuers came to a horrible realization: The angle of the tunnel meant they couldn’t bend John’s body backward without likely breaking his legs. In his weakened state, the shock could kill him. And the cams anchoring the pulleys were slipping from their uncertain places in the weak calcite." 

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune)

"They had him to a level spot where he wasn't heading downhill with his head below his feet. During the course of that, they have a raising system to hold him in position, and one of the devices of that system failed, and Mr. Jones actually fell back to the area where he had been stuck for so long." 

— Sgt. Spencer Cannon, Utah County Sheriff's Office (KSL News)

"Nutty Putty is a kind of unusual cave. Most of the walls are a little soft (hence the name) and it would be difficult to get a strong and reliable anchor in them. There is certainly room for discussion about whether multiple anchors could have and should have been used, to prevent this accident."

— RockMonkey, Cave Rescue Relative (RME4x4 Forum)

What was the cause of Jones' death?

"John expired at some time between 9 pm and midnight. No autopsy was performed but his death is believed to be the consequence of being upside-down for over 24 hours. In this position, the lower organs compress the diaphragm and lungs, making each breath a physical chore. Also in this position, the lungs can fill with fluid, and John’s breath was heard to be very gurgly in the last couple of hours. Many other medical issues can also result from being inverted. It is amazing, and a testament to John’s will to live that he survived as long as he did."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Incident Report) 

"At the top, Dave pulled Utah County sheriff’s Lt. Tom Hodgson aside. 'He’s dying right now. He has a heartbeat, but he’s had difficulty breathing before I got there. You can’t get someone down there before he dies.' Dave was spent. Instead, Brandon Kowallis, another member of Utah Cave Rescue who’d just arrived at Nutty Putty Cave, crawled into the tunnel to take his place. Down in the cave, though, John didn’t respond, Kowallis said. He was already unconscious. He never woke up. At 11:56 p.m. on Nov. 25, a paramedic crawled into the cave and pronounced John dead. Kowallis said he had heard John dying."

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune) 

"He [Jones] would go in and out of these, delirious... Not moments of panic, he was having total visions, total hallucinations. Even if they were talking to him, he was lost in this. Because his body was dying. As the liquid was building up in his lungs, and he eventually just suffocated. Just a horrible way to go."

— Michael Leavitt, Nutty Putty Manager (RadioWest Interview) 

"The position he fell back into compressed his chest, and he could not breath (or could only take shallow breaths)."

— RockMonkey, Cave Rescue Relative (RME4x4 Forum)

"Nutty Putty was at best roughly 74 degrees... that's still cooler than your body's temperature ... I've spent hours in there (some of it surveying) and yeah you'd cool off once the sweat dries off your body, granted hypothermia would set in s-l-o-w-l-y in that particular cave but it'd still be faster than starvation and dehydration I would think."

— Ralph E. Powers, Caver (Cavechat Forum)

"Yup. Air can hold very little heat. So it doesn't take much to warm it up to body temperature. So at 74 degrees in the air, a light Tshirt and a saunter will keep you very comfortable. A long sleeve shirt and a saunter might even make you sweat. Rock and water, or various combinations like mud, can hold a lot more heat so you have to give and give before warming that rock. And given that the rock is attached to more rock which is attached to more rock, you can't give enough to completely warm it. Think of the feeling of 74 degree air which is very pleasant vs swimming in a 74 degree pool, which is very doable but on the cool side. 

Another way to think of it is to look at a corollary. Rock/water can hold more heat too. If you pull a frozen steak out of the freezer at 5:00 p.m., will you have a better chance of having it thawed by dinner time if you put it in 74 degree air or 74 degree water? Air will chill quickly to steak temperature and end up insulating it unless it is changed out (convection). Water will get colder too but not nearly as much. As it contains much more heat (or energy if you prefer) it will maintain a temperature gradiant for much longer and be able to thaw that steak faster. 

So standing in a 74 degree cave will seem warm since you'll warm the air your suit/clothes quickly and it will stay that way as you move around. Trapped in a crevice or tube, you have lots of surface area to transfer heat to the rock, you are surrounded by a substance that can absorb a LOT of heat and will not rise to body temperature, and you are held immobile so cannot regenerate the heat that you lose for long. A recipe for disaster all the way around."

— Roger Mortimer, Caver (Cavechat Forum)

"But Jones fell again less than 30 minutes after he was unstuck. He wasn't injured in the fall, but started struggling to breathe about two hours later. He later fell silent after relaying messages to his family, Hodgson said. Rescuers, who also have medical training, threaded a stethoscope in the crevice but could not find a pulse. He was pronounced dead at 11:57 p.m. He is thought to have died of the effects of the constant pressure on his body. 'I don't think we'll ever be certain, and I don't think that's important,' said Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy." 

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune) 

"Leavitt, who sent in his son, then 15, to the narrow passageway with the EKG, because the teenager’s size and the exhaustion of the other rescuers made him the best option. A friend ultimately took the device from Leavitt’s son to confirm Jones’ death."

— Emily Morgan (Deseret News) 

"The trapped man had trouble breathing for hours. Sometime before midnight his vital signs stopped, and rescuers exited the cave."

— John Hollenhorst and Nicole Gonzales (KSL News) 

"Also, there was a report that said they started an IV for him--also not true. Being head-down, the problem becomes fluids pooling in your head and causing aneurysms or whatever, and increasing the volume of body fluids would only hasten the inevitable problems. :( BTW, although they won't know for sure until an autopsy, they figure that's what killed him."

— I Lean (RME4x4 Forum)

Why was the body never recovered?

"Why didn't they retrieve the body after John died? Let me describe what some have told me. If the rigging had remained intact they would have pulled the body up to where it would be necessary to change the direction of force from near vertical to near horizontal. Because the feet were against the ceiling and John's long legs put his knees below the bend, it appeared that it would be necessary to break his legs at the knee, bending them forward in what might be called a super hyperextension of the knee. The situation never got to that point because he expired before they were able to pull him back up. 

As an aside, because the rope had been around his knees for several hours, cutting off all blood flow, the lower part of his legs had essentially died. If he could have been rescued, his lower legs would have to be immediately amputated to prevent the poisonous effects of gangrene. Upon his death, all of the rescuers were physically exhausted. Their mental state was not the best. The announcement was that retrieval would be made the next day, but that didn't happen. I don't know why, but can conjecture that it was realized that even in death, an easy retrieval was not possible."

— Dale Green, Nutty Putty Discoverer (Cavechat Forum)

"You can already crawl back through a small tube to the body and attach ropes to the multiplicity of webbing around the feet. But you can't pull the body out without pulling it in half. Think of a 200 pound body lying prostrate in a hole sloping at about 45 degrees or more, head down. The body virtually fills the entire hole. 

Think of the enormous friction present. There is more to moving the body than by just lifting 200 pounds. There is no room for the lone rescuer at the body to move except to back out or even to move his arms back down to his side. You have to tow the body over of a slight bend with a small ridge. The stomach is pushed all the way in by the bend and the lower ribcage ribs hang on the ridge at the bend making further movement impossible. You have a multiple pulley system that must exert hundreds of pounds of tension, but nothing gives, and it is absolutely impossible to reach in to elevate that part of the body that is at the bend. There is no room. Repeat, there is no room! You pull until the rock around the anchor point breaks away and the body slides back down. 

This is the information that was gleaned from the sheriff's department spokesman during several TV interviews and can be revised when the final report is issued. The man is now dead. The stench is terrible. Further action is not feasible. They only had a window of 27 hours before the man gave up the ghost, which was precious little time to get elaborate schemes into play. Conjecture is that the time with his head 4 feet lower than his feet was the cause of death. The rescuers are very knowledgeable about rock removal methods, but had no time. 

My understanding is that they had a small air-powered jackhammer all the way in there and did remove rock. I imagine the danger in removing rock in the steep incline where the body is, is rock rolling down and wedging against the body but I wasn't there and don't really know. There is no way you would be able to reach around your tool to prevent it in such a constricted environment. If the body is ever recovered, which is unlikely, it will be only bones."

— Dale Green, Nutty Putty Discoverer (Cavechat Forum)

"The powers in charge just announced that all efforts to remove the body from Nutty Putty Cave have been suspended and that the cave will be sealed from all access. Details are sketchy, but I personally can't believe that they are going to permanently leave him down there. I recommended in two interviews today with KSL-TV5 and the Salt Lake Tribune that only the area that causes all the rescues needs to be sealed and the rest left open. If the cave is made John Jones's grave, like it now sounds, I think that would be totally irresponsible, IMHO. Stay tuned for further information."

— Dale Green, Nutty Putty Discoverer (Cavechat Forum) 

"The Nutty Putty Cave is being singled out by the governing powers including government agencies, search and rescue agencies, and people who don't like caving. That is the reality and we all have to get over it. The normal governing agencies are scared to death of cave rescues. Why? Because they feel so helpless. They have all of this wonderful rescue ability, equipment, and training, yet very little of it works below ground. Most of the equipment is too big. Most of the normal rescue parties are too big. It is very helpless feeling standing above ground looking at over 100 other rescue personnel knowing that only two individuals can get anywhere near the trapped caver at a time. All the other man power can do very little."

— Michael Leavitt, Nutty Putty Manager (Open Letter to Cavers) 

"By the time he passed, and his death was pronounced, the caving resources were depleted. Once somebody dies, the body starts the decompose, rigor mortis, bloating, the hot temperatures in there. It swells in the passage and now do you wait until that passes? By the following morning when they were going to start the recovery again, they suspended it, 

The family had been told that the recovery would be much, much, too expensive, time consuming, risky, and really they needed to consider leaving his body in the cave, and that was very upsetting."

— Michael Leavitt, Cave Access Manager (Nightside Interview) 

"At first, they reacted with horror [Jones' family upon hearing his body couldn't be removed]. What did they mean, they couldn’t get his body out? But removing John after his death would be even harder than it was when he was alive. Now, he couldn’t help them. He couldn’t push himself up. He couldn’t twist through a rocky corkscrew that led out of the tunnel. So they agreed. They couldn’t put the rescuers in any more danger. The cave would be his final resting place. Crews would seal it with concrete at its main entrance, both to give the family peace and to prevent another injury." 

— Lindsay Whitehurst (Salt Lake Tribune)

"Yes there is a way, but when the decision was made it was felt that it would be difficult and that the remains might slide further down into the passage. Nobody in the room, that I could tell, could reasonably make a good determination given what we had all been through. In subsequent days, I heard a few proposals of ideas, but none of which could take place until more decomposition has been accomplished, and that meant more time. I had the current decomposition process explained to me and yes it was gross and I do not care to relay the details here."

— Michael Leavitt, Cave Access Manager (Nutty Putty Site) 

"After midnight, all rescuers were told to go home and spend time with their families as it was Thanksgiving Day, and were to await instructions for a possible body recovery over the weekend."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Incident Report) 

"There were ways to get the body out, and time to implement them. It was a severe blow to the rescuers, not to mention the family, that we were not allowed to recover the body right away."

— Andy Armstrong, Cave Rescue (Cavechat Forum)