CNN
—
An American cave near Anamur in southern Turkey was rescued by emergency workers Stuck Hundreds of meters Underground Earlier this month.
Mark Dickey is “caught in the hands of a rescuer. He looks good at first glance. He will take a helicopter to Mersin Hospital,” Recep Salci of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Tuesday.
Tiki suffered from suspected gastrointestinal bleeding while inside the 1,276-meter-deep (4,186 ft) Morga Sinkhole in the Morga Valley, according to the Turkish Caving Federation.
The European Cave Rescue Association (ECRA) received a call on September 2 that he was experiencing severe stomach pain.
Turkish Government Communications Directorate/AP
American caver Mark Dickey, 40, became trapped in the Morga sinkhole in southern Turkey.
Italian Alpine Rescue/Reuters
Members of the Italian Alpine Rescue team, which was taken on Thursday, were involved in an emergency operation to save Tiki.
An international rescue operation led by at least 200 aid workers began on Saturday. According to ECRA, the operation plans to divide the cave into seven areas and hand over responsibility at different depths to rescue teams from various countries, including the United States, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Turkey.
Rescue teams took Dicky down 180 meters (590 feet) to the surface and eventually rescued him from the cave.
In an update on Monday, the Turkish Caving Federation said Tiki’s rescue would be completed “tonight or tomorrow”.
“If all goes well, we aim to fully recover Mark by tonight or tomorrow,” the consortium said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
A doctor was with Dickey inside the cave, and the rescue team received instant messages from them via an established comm.
Dickey is an instructor at the National Cave Rescue Commission, where he has worked for 10 years, according to the website. Caving Academy, a non-profit for cavers founded by Dickey. He is Medical Commission Secretary at the European Caving Association and Executive Director of the Caving Academy.
He began caving in the 1990s and has caved in 20 different states and 10 different countries in the United States. The website said.
EDIT: The title of this story has been edited to reflect how long Dickey was stuck.
