Provo, Utah – Two women and two men were found dead in a narrow, underwater passageway that led to a chamber in a spring-fed cave on a hillside above Provo, officials said today.
Police were working to identify the people, ages 18 to 28, and notify relatives, said Karen Mayne, a spokeswoman for the Provo Police Department.
“We believe they’d already been into the cavern and were on their way out when something went wrong,” said Lt. Dave Bennett of the Utah County sheriff’s office search and rescue team.
All the bodies were found in the underwater passageway, facing toward the entrance to the cave as if they were swimming out, he said.
Autopsies were planned to determine the cause of death.
The cavern is a chamber in a cave on Y Mountain on public land owned by the city of Provo. The chamber is reachable by a water-filled passageway about 15 feet long with a guide rope tied to a rock at the opening and to a piece of wood inside the chamber.
Police said the men were wearing shorts and sandals, and the women were dressed in shorts, shirts and tennis shoes. Pieces of a flashlight were found in the water, but it wasn’t clear if the flashlight belonged to anyone in the group, police said.
There were also unlit candles in the chamber, police said.
The four friends and a fifth man went to the cave between midnight and 1 a.m. today, said Provo police Lt. Scott Finch.
It’s still undetermined when the four went into the chamber, he said. The man who stayed behind called 911 when his friends did not return, although the time elapsed is unclear, Finch said.
During the rescue attempt, emergency crews pumped oxygen into the cave and used sump pumps to drain about 6 inches of water from the submerged passageway. A rescue team from the city of Orem that specializes in working in confined spaces such as caves was brought in to help, Mayne said.
However, crews were unfamiliar with the cave and its layout, she said.
Word of the location of the cave seems to have spread by word of mouth, said Provo resident Brian Lamprey, 29, who said he went into the cavern about three weeks ago.
“You hear about it, and it’s sort of fascinating – almost like a movie type thing, an underwater expedition, kind of fascinating,” he said outside the cave.
The entrance to the passageway is a water-filled hole, 90 feet to 100 feet inside the cave, Bennett said.
Lamprey said that during his visit he dropped into the hole and worked his way through the underwater passage for about 15 feet before popping up in the next chamber. He said someone had placed a guide rope in the passage.
There is 2 or 3 feet of breathable air above the water in that next chamber, which could hold about eight people, he said.
Provo is 45 miles south of Salt Lake City.
