Some Task Ahead - Thai Cave Rescue
Thai cave rescue: Starved boys must gain weight for three‑hour swim to freedom
British and Thai rescuers are in a race against time to save the 12 young boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave before further rainfall in the next few days.
As Thailand enters the heaviest part of its monsoon season, the deep caves where the emaciated boys have been sheltering for the past ten days will suffer more flooding. Two British divers found the group on Monday after they had been taken there on a trip by their coach after football practice.
The divers aim to teach the boys, none of whom can swim, basic scuba techniques to escape along the three-hour route back to safety once they recover their strength. The boys, who are aged 11-16, are being given high-calorie gels, paracetamol and liquids to prepare their bodies for solid food.
“If the water falls enough and they are strong enough, we will teach them how to dive,” Narong Ossottanakorn, governor of Chiang Rai province, said but added that it was not appropriate at present because of their weak state.
A senior Thai official told The Times that he hoped that attempts to bring the boys out of the cave may start as early as today.
Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, the British rescue divers, laid lines from the exit of the cave to where the group is trapped so that vital supplies can be transported. An American expat and diving instructor with the Thai navy Seals said that helicopters were exploring the cave’s exterior for places to drill and lift the boys out.
However, the favoured rescue plan remains draining the floodwater and diverting it from the cave in an effort to reduce the level inside and bring the group out along the same route that the divers used to enter.
Thai authorities have warned that the scuba dive cannot be made until a doctor — who has joined the group — rules that the children have recovered, having been starved for ten days.
Only then will rescuers teach the group how to dive in their cave with the hope that they can manage the three-hour journey back to the outside world.
The boys and their 25-year-old coach are being tended to around the clock by a team of Thai navy divers and a doctor.
Rescuers have been reluctant to be drawn on when the evacuation might be attempted from the Tham Luang caves in Chiang Rai. However, one senior government official connected with the operation told The Times that he hoped it would begin imminently. The boys would be accompanied by professional divers.
Edd Sorenson, of International Cave Rescue and Recovery, warned that swimming out of the cave would be “extremely dangerous” and that the boys might panic. “As long as the kids know that we know where they are, they have food, a way to keep warm, water or filtration systems and light, it would be safest to wait it out,’ he told the BBC.
The main plan to extract the boys remains to continue draining floodwater from the cave, enabling the trapped party to walk out. During the dry season, visitors can easily walk through it. This is thought to be the way the boys entered, covering more than a mile before heavy rains blocked their exit.
They had been missing since a week last Saturday after their football coach took them into the cave to sign their names on the walls, a common practice among locals. It is thought that the trip was a treat for the boys after their regular training.
The caves are a tourist attraction in the region, in the northern part of the country, but the authorities close and guard them once the rainy season starts in June. At the beginning of the month, before the monsoons start, guards are more relaxed about visitors.
Mr Stanton and Mr Volanthen, were the first to reach the party, found on a high, dry plain. One of the divers will return to Britain today, the governor said.
The Thai navy began trying to establish a telecommunications line between the boys and their families yesterday. It is not clear how much progress had been made. One of the boys, Duangpetch Phromthep, turned 14 yesterday, prompting his mother to wish him a happy birthday on social media, adding: “You’re almost out!”
Kobchai Boonyaorana, deputy director general of the department of disaster prevention said that teams were working round the clock to drain water from the cave by pumping it out and diverting its path using heavy rocks.
Water levels have gone down approximately 20cm since Monday but experts say that it is difficult to predict how much it has reduced inside the cave because of the differing shapes of the chambers.
The main risk is that the region suffers from heavy rainfall, placing the rescuers and the boys in danger.
Once the group are freed, they will be taken by helicopter to Chiang Rai hospital, 50km away.
• A Chilean miner offered the boys some advice: help each other and prepare to get out. Omar Reygadas spent 69 days trapped underground in Chile in 2010 with 32 other miners. “I believe that boys with a lot of strength are going to manage to be whole when they get out,” Mr Reygadas told Associated Press. “They shouldn’t be ashamed to be scared, because we were scared, too. Even as adult men, we cried.”
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