VERLOT, Wash. — Tuesday morning, rescue crews will return to recover a body buried in a collapse at the Big Four Ice Caves in Snohomish County.
QUICK FACTS:
- One killed, five others were injured
- Debris making it difficult to recover the body
- One child has minor injuries
- Hot summer has "weakened the caves"
One person was killed and several others were injured in the collapse Monday.
Three people were flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. A 25-year-old man was in critical condition, but as of Tuesday morning, he was upgraded to serious condition and is in intensive care. A 35-year-old man was upgraded from serious to satisfactory condition and is no longer in intensive care. A 35-year-old woman who was in satisfactory condition was treated and released overnight.
Two teen girls were injured.
A girl was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett with minor injuries. She may have been released overnight.
Authorities said the body of the person killed is still inside the cave because there is so much debris and the cave is so unstable that it is not safe for crews to go inside.
The sheriff’s office helicopter was dispatched to the Big Four Ice Caves shortly before 6 p.m. on Monday, and responders headed to the Verlot Visitors Center, which is 11 miles east of Granite Falls on the Mt. Loop Highway.
“The parking lot was full with response teams and medical units and stuff like that,” said John Scott, who shot cellphone video of people being transferred from rescue helicopters to medical choppers. “They were being talked to, so they were responsive, but they were in [back] braces.”
“It’s not illegal to go in the caves, but we’ve been saying since mid-May that it’s extremely dangerous,” said a Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.
She said the hot summer has “weakened the caves themselves. They’re a frozen over avalanche shoot, over a waterfall, below a rock shoot. It’s incredibly dangerous.”
Earlier ice cave collapse in nearby area
A video posted to YouTube on Monday shows an ice cave roof collapsing at the Big Four Ice Caves Sunday afternoon.
Sara Soleimani, who shared the video with KIRO 7, says people were inside the cave during the weekend collapse, but they were not under the ice when it fell.
In the video, people walk out of the cave after the collapse; one shaking his head as others observed the fallen ice.
"You could [have been] killed," a woman either shooting or near the camera said.
Many signs around the cave tells hikers to not go inside.
KIRO 7 reached out to U.S. Forest Service officials, who say they have not heard of the collapse. They planned to go out to the area Wednesday to investigate.
Watch the video (warning graphic language) on YouTube here.
Forest Service gave ice cave warning in May
In late May, the Forest Service warned that a trip to the Big Four Ice Caves in Snohomish County could be deadly. The caves were unstable, crumbling and collapsing because of the low amount of snowpack.
"I counted 442 people within like a three-hour time span,” Anissa Smith, a ranger with the Forest Service, told KIRO 7 in May.
Smith witnessed a partial collapse from the top of the cave earlier that month and said they were the most unstable she’d seen.
It’s not illegal to go into the caves, but there are several signs telling visitors to stay out.
In 2010, 11-year-old Grace Tam was killed when she was crushed by a chunk of ice the size of a truck.
KIRO
