Emergency response ‘teamwork’ leads to the rescue of a man from a Centre County cave

Thanks to a large emergency response effort, a man was rescued from a Centre County cave on Friday.

At 1:12 p.m., emergency crews were dispatched to assist Pleasant Gap Fire Company at the “J4” cave off of state Route 26 in Pleasant Gap. A college-aged man had reportedly gone into the cave 18 hours earlier, and had not been seen or heard from since.

Located on Graymont property, the large cave was closed to the public in 2004, but remains a popular site for local spelunkers.

To reach the small entrance to the cave, rescuers had to scale the rock wall, according to Alpha Fire Company. Once in the cave, the teams were split into four teams of two, three teams to search, and one team to lay down a hard-wired communication line.

After about 90 minutes of searching, the man was located and extricated. According to Alpha, he was uninjured, evaluated on scene by EMS and left with his friends.

Also assisting in the search-and-rescue operation were the Nittany Grotto Caving Club, Centre County Emergency Management, Spring Township police, Allison Photo and Aerial Imaging and the National Cave Rescue Commission.

“Thank you to all involved for the awesome teamwork and positive outcome,” Pleasant Gap Fire Co. said in a Facebook post.

This story was originally published October 6, 2018 at 10:38 AM.