"It was just a normal day": The teammate of Thai boys trapped remembers the day his friends disappeared



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MAE SAI, Thailand – He too could have been trapped in this dark flooded cave.

Songpol Kanthawong, 13, has not been able to get rid of this idea since June 23, when his teammates disappeared. He is part of the same football team, the Moo Pa or Wild Boars, whose coach and 12 members went to explore a vast complex of caves in northern Thailand when the rains hit, trapping them for 12 years. days.

"My mother came to get me right after the practice," said Pone, sitting in front of a stifling clbadroom at the Mae Sai Prasitsart School, where six of the twelve boys also study. "It makes me very frightened to think that I could go with them."

Pone and other clbadmates describe them as adventurers who loved to cycle around the Doi Nang mountain range. They were not familiar with the Tham Luang cave system of six miles, one of the longest in Thailand, having visited it several times.

Thai authorities and a team of 39 international experts, from countries as far away as Britain and China, continue to think of the best way to extract the boys and their coach, who can not swim.The drama has fascinated the country and much of the outside world, provoking pbadionate discussions around the coffee table and chatter on social networks around the world on ways to extract boys.At a press conference on the site relief Thursday, the gouve Chiang Rai spokesman Narongsak Osotthanakorn said rescuers and divers were racing against the clock to try to pump enough water for the boys to go out. Although the weather was relatively dry, the water continues to seep into the cave, even though the water levels have dropped by about 40 cm.

"We were racing against time before we found them and now we run against the water that continues to infiltrate the cavern," he said.

[Anxiety grows in Thailand as trapped boys are being given diving lessons]

The main mission of the rescuers is to continue pumping water, he added, before heavy rains complicate their efforts. If boys are not extracted in a few days, there is a chance that monsoons can trap them for months, with fewer options for a rescue.

"Every day, we badyze the time announced by the meteorological department will fall," added the governor.

It will take 11 hours to reach the boys and bring them back to the mainland, Osotthanakorn said, and the communication should hold all the time to make sure the rescue is going well.

Authorities tried to expand The phones fell into the water, preventing boys from contacting impatient families camped at the rescue site.

On the outside, Pone described the fateful day, which began as any other with the practice of football. He took out his phone to show the last message of his 14-year-old teammate Ekarat Wongsukchan, who is now in the cave.

In the video, the boys are in the same red and blue t-shirt that they were wearing when they were found Monday by two British divers, seemingly carefree while they're biking around quiet streets of Mae Sai. The sky was relatively clear at the time, he says, but an hour later a downpour began – leading to the sudden floods that trapped the boys in the cave system, until now he has it took five hours of diving for the divers, narrow pbadages to reach them.

"Before this rain, there was nothing, it was just a normal day," he said.

Now we teach boys how to dive – a feat since none of them even knows how to swim.

"There is no visibility, it's a confined space," said Matt Fitzgerald, a member of the Australian Federal Police's diving team, which deployed six divers to help with the rescue effort. "It would be terrifying" for them.

Thai authorities say boys do not need to be out together, which brings up a scenario where a few boys could be out at once, depending on who from among them was strong enough Drilling an opening in the cave is also an option, say the officials, pointing out that the boys breathe so there is probably a tree somewhere in the system.

At Mae Sai Prasit Sart School, daily prayers continue for the trapped boys and their trainer. The rescue operation was accompanied by Buddhist rituals, including the blessings of prominent monks. On Wednesday evening, framed photos of the Thai king were presented to the boys' family members by the local authorities, a move that they hoped would give them strength and resilience.

Pone is looking forward to the day when his friends will be free, he said, so that he can update them on the results of the World Cup. Before his phone buzz with all goals scored, but now he's been flooded instead with goodwill messages and support for their team on their group chat app – messages that they do not have. have, of course, not yet been able to read.

"The messages are no longer about the World Cup, but how much we miss our friends," he said. "We try to support each other and remind ourselves that it will all be solved."

Jittrapon Kaicome contributed to this report.

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