Blue Spring Orange City Closed yesterday due to a cave in

..

FTW

My buddy was diving at Blue Spring Orange City (Saturday or yesterday I believe) when he noticed a 'cave in', his words. I don't know the details, but they closed the diving down until it could be investigated a bit more.

tj

[OutlawCaver]

Maybe Cork Rock has finally fallen into the abyss. If so, get out your reels folks, it will be time to lay some line.

[Tegg]

I am sure this has nothing to do with the VERY recent reduction in flow by the pumping of water from the spring...

Thanks to the St Johns Water Management District for allowing Deland to pump more water from the spring for the next 20 years...

Maybe they can make this first mag spring a 2nd mag spring, that way we can dive the cave, or it will just do what alot of springs do when flow is affected... have geologic events...

[bmwcaves]

About 7 years ago a buddy of mine and I were diving in Blue and we noticed all this silt rolling down into the cave while we were coming out. Manged to work our way up the slope and through the O vis conditions to the log. We thought it was just divers screwing around but there was no one esle there. The run turned to milk and the spring was totally blown, and it stayed that way the rest of the time we were there. They closed the spring when we headed downstream.
The next time a I took some folks there on a dive about a year later, we found a brand new small room in the passage at 20 ft with a silt cone that had been formed by a ceiling collapse. Obviously this was the site of the collapse on the day we were there.

It could have been kind of sh*tty ending if we were coming out of a system not familar to us and had this happen.
Thats why you run a line, even in a place like Blue

Brian

[metaldector]

Saw nothing out of the ordinary except the log that has been across the cave at 90' wasn't there and has moved down to about 105'. This might have been the"cave in". Ranger's didn't say anything about Blue being closed on Saturday? Whatever it was it must have been minor.

[Bakrt]

I dove it on Sunday morning and I don't know what you guys are talking about. There was a class from Fl Technical there mucking it up so we waited till they got out. There was a lot of people there. Swimmers and snorklers at least 60 people at the boil. I was there till 12:30 they didn't close it when I was there.