Hours of agony for an Italian speleologist-explorer who had an accident in an unexplored section of a speleothem in the Italian Alps, with rescuers still unable to reach her (although they have determined her location).

32-year-old Ottavia Piana from Brescia had begun exploring with her team to geomorphologically map the Bueno Fonteno cave, in the Bergamo region, a labyrinthine topography, with small caves and tunnels, totalling more than 32 kilometers.

However, an accident she had (she fell from a height of five metres, resulting in injuries to her lower limbs, chest and face), trapped her at a depth of 580 metres, a distance of about four hours from the cave entrance. The teams have been able to locate her and have established contact with her (the first thing she asked them to do was to tell her partner that she was OK), but it will take them at least 48 hours to reach the spot and rescue her.

It should be noted that the same speleologist was also trapped in the same cave in the summer of 2023, with rescuers intervening to extricate her then as well.