The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/gorge/)
The Ithaca Fire Department rescued a man who fell into a 30-foot dam on Six Mile Creek near Giles Street on Sunday, marking the fifth time this past month the fire department responded to a dam-related incident.
The Ithaca Fire Department rescued a woman from Six Mile Creek Gorge near First Dam on Wednesday afternoon.
Emergency personnel retrieved the body of a Cornell freshman from the base of the Fall Creek gorge Saturday afternoon. The student had been missing since Thursday night.
The victim appeared to be about 21 years old, and police were later able to identify him and notify his family, a sergeant said late on Friday.
As the end of the year approaches, campus officials have begun a thorough review of various public safety measures in light of the University’s recent budget cuts. Representatives from the three colleges in Ithaca — Ithaca College, Tompkins County Community College and Cornell — met last night in the Africana Center for a panel discussion of the challenges facing their respective student bodies.
Ithaca is gorges. However, according to the city’s municipal code, it is in fact illegal to swim in Ithaca’s gorges. The University Assembly is now considering a resolution — proposed by the Codes and Judicial Committee (CJC) — to amend Cornell’s Code of Judicial Conduct so that the gorges on Cornell’s campus are off-limits as well.
At the assembly meeting last night, there was only enough time to briefly review the issue. The assembly will continue the discussion in its meeting next month.
The picturesque views of Beebe Lake from the Thurston Avenue Bridge will now feature one eye-catching disruption. Cornell’s Hydraulic Lab — a decaying stone building that projected out from Fall Creek Gorge next to the Triphammer Footbridge and across from the Alumni House — is no longer standing.
The abandoned five-story tower, often considered an icon of Cornell’s scenic campus, collapsed at the end of last week, ending any speculation as to how long the structurally precarious building would last.
The remains of the 70-foot tall building lay in the gorge on Saturday morning, according to Giffen Ott ’13, a first year architecture student who noticed on Friday afternoon that the lab had collapsed.
Ryan Lavin ’09, president of the Student Assembly, was at the scene two years ago when a group of students helped pull the body of a drowned teenager out of one of the gorges. Now, Lavin, along with other student leaders, Cornell administrators and Ithaca city officials, participated in a meeting on Friday to discuss new tactics for enforcing gorge safety issues in light of recent deaths and injuries.
Local emergency officials declared a Cornell student dead when his body was recovered from Fall Creek Gorge below the suspension bridge leading to North Campus last night around 9:20 p.m. He was later identified as 18-year-old Douglas Lowe from Shelton, Conn, a student in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Lowe was said to have been swimming in the gorge with about 12 other people when his body was pulled under the current, the Ithaca Journal reported. He slid down a smooth rock surface that leads to a swirling pool of collected water — often a popular swimming spot for Cornellians.