Twenty-three people were trapped in a cave for nearly twelve hours on New Year's Day, when a twenty-five-stone woman got stuck in a small cave known as the 'Tunnel of Love'.
She was eventually freed in a complicated manouvre involving a pulley and some liquid paraffin lubricant.
Before going into the Tunnel of Love – in the Cango caves of South Africa's Western Cape - the woman had been warned that her weight might cause problems in the tight space, but she insisted on going.
During the twelve hour weight, the rescuers managed to pass supplies past the woman to the people trapped behind her, including blankets, chocolate, water, insulin and a bucket for their bodily waste.
They then succeeded in greasing the walls of the caves sufficiently that they were able to winch the obese woman out of the hole, shortly before midnight.
Hein Gerstner, the manager of the caves, told the AFP news agency: 'We regularly have people getting stuck in the caves for an hour or so, but never anything on this scale. This was a freak. None of our guides, some of whom have been here for more than 40 years, have ever seen anything like it.'
He emphasised: 'She was really quite a large woman.'
SOURCE 
Previous Topic
Index
