The 12 Boys Lost in The Cave Were Found But Getting Them Out Could Take Weeks to Months
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| Food, Oxygen, and Equipment are being Taken to the Boys. The Cave system is over four miles and the kids are about one third down the cave system. There are other connecting caves in the system. The only way to get to the boys or the boys out is diving through the water and is not a short distance and the water is not clear water. You can't see in front of your face 🦊 which makes it unnerving for someone, not experience. |
SINGAPORE — The rescue of 12 members of a boys’ soccer team and their coach trapped in a northern Thailand cave could take months, the navy said Tuesday, as officials weigh the best extraction options after a dramatic nine-day search.
Thai authorities are committed to “100 percent safety” in extracting the boys and their coach from a partially flooded network of caves, said Narongsak Osatanakorn, governor of Chiang Rai province, according to the Associated Press. Options include coaching the boys on how to use special breathing masks or draining water from the cave. None of the boys can swim or dive.
The boys, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach, went missing on June 23. They were exploring a cave complex in a forest park in northern Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. Local and international rescuers, including a team of Thai navy divers and cave experts, had spent days trying to locate the team, but muddy waters complicated their efforts and blocked access to the chambers of the cave complex. The search for the boys gripped the nation and the world, and it ended Monday evening when two British divers found the team on a dry patch in one of the flooded chambers.
[A boys’ soccer team trapped in a flooded Thai cave has been found alive — nine days later]
In a video posted by the Thai navy on its Facebook page, the boys are seen huddled on a rock in mud-stained T-shirts and shorts surrounded by water.
“How many of you are there — 13? Brilliant,” a member of the rescue team, speaking in English, said to the boys. “You have been here 10 days. You are very strong.”
The members of a youth soccer team and their coach are pictured moments after they were found inside the Tham Luang cave complex in Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park, Chiang Rai province, Thailand. (Royal Thai Army//EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
When one of the boys asked if they could leave the cave, the rescuers replied that they could not yet but that many people were coming for them.
“Navy SEAL will come tomorrow, with food and doctors and everything,” the rescuer said.
The Thai military has confirmed that it is preparing for long-term food supplies and diving training for the group. Waters in the cave must recede to safe levels before the boys can be safely extracted, experts say. Engineers have been pumping water out of the cave, but more precipitation is expected as the rainy season hits the area.
Options for extraction include drilling through the cave to find another entrance in among the caverns. But experts have warned that this could take a very long time, and be difficult and the boys are in a small space. Diving them out has been floated as the fastest but among the most dangerous extraction methods. A Thai official said that the boys may have no choice but to try to swim out, ahead of bad rains predicted later this week, according to the Associated Press.
Khaosod English, a Bangkok-based news organization, reported that officials are calling for donations of small diving masks that would fit the boys, as regular diving equipment could be too dangerous.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha praised the rescue teams for finding the soccer team trapped in a cave but urged them not to rush the rescue operation.
Officials say they have performed an informal medical evaluation and determined that most of the boys are in stable condition. No one has any critical injuries, said Chiang Rai’s governor.
The British Cave Rescue Council, a voluntary underground rescue operation, has been in touch with the British divers who located the boys. In an interview with the BBC, the council’s vice chairman, Bill Whitehouse, said the divers described the dive as “gnarly.”
There were “complications and problems,” said Whitehouse, “They were having to swim against the currents and pull themselves along the walls. The visibility wouldn’t have been very good.”
The dive took about three hours, he added. The cave system is at least four miles long, and waters can reach depths of 16 feet during the monsoon season, which lasts through October.
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