The Thai cave rescue, before its triumph, sank to the brink of disaster

Later, divers attempting to navigate the turbulent and fast currents in submerged pbadages deemed the work so dangerous that they nearly gave up. A diver said that the current of water was so strong that his mask was torn off when he turned his head.

Once the team located, while the preparations for a rescue were gaining momentum, one of the Thai divers trapped the crew through the long winding stretches died when his own air sank low.

Thai Navy SEALs quickly tried to learn the basics of cave diving. Their training is in open water and they had no experience in the caves. By the time it was time to decide who to choose, the boys decided on their own, introducing the Thai SEAL with a list of names in order, according to the Thai authorities.

Then, on Tuesday, shortly after the group inside the deepest cavern was put in safety, equipment that dumped water at levels rendering it "safe". Manageable escape is broken. Without the pump, torrential rains caused the water levels in the cave to rise.

"Fortunately we completed our mission yesterday, because the cave is covered with water today," Royal Admiral

Arpakorn Yookongkaew

said Wednesday.

The world has been waiting impatiently for days to hear the fate of the football team. Twelve members of the Wild Boars club and their coach, from Mae Sai town on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, were trapped more than half a kilometer underground on 23 June by floods sudden. The group had been exploring parts of the cave before, and the outing had been planned as an afternoon adventure. The team moved further into the cave to find the dry land when the waters cut their escape.

When they were found after 10 days by divers, so great were the challenges of putting the group safe by the treacherous and partially submerged pbadages of many experts did not expect that the Thai authorities would # 39; occupy it.

Relief was aided by a ragtag group of military experts, divers, medical personnel and a Thai rock singer. and his fan club

The effort has enlisted more than 900 police, 10 police helicopters, seven police ambulances, over 700 air canisters and thousands of rescuers. The volunteer cooks gave more than 5,000 meals a day to the people on the ground. When divers needed combinations, air tanks and regulators, the volunteers collected hundreds more than needed.

Finally, all the boys and their coach were transported on a stretcher by a team of more than 100 divers for three days. Sunday.

"We are not sure if it was a miracle, a science or what," the Navy SEALs of the Thai Navy posted on their Facebook page Tuesday, the day the rescue was completed. "All 13 boars are now out of the cave."

The boys and the coach, who are generally healthy, will be quarantined at the hospital next week while they are screened for unknown diseases. . The videos broadcast by the Thai authorities showed family members, some crying, beckoning to their sons through the windows of the hospital.

The Tham Luang cave system is estimated to be 6 miles of twisted limestone caverns. A rescue unit of the SEALs of the Thai Navy arrived at the cave before dawn on June 25, and later that day, it reached an elevated platform called Pattaya Beach, about 4 km from the entrance to the cave. There, they found footprints and shoes – signs that the lost group had pbaded.

But the SEALs turned around, worried about the arrival of the rains and the lack of air cans to go farther. They were only about 400 meters from the higher, drier area where the boys and their trainer had been refugees.

It would take a week before someone can come back. Heavy rains quickly swept the hills around the cave, gushing through the porous limestone and pushing the SEAL towards the entrance

Meanwhile, a group of cave diving enthusiasts converged on Mae Sai with offers of badistance and expertise. A team – three British Russian divers who had participated in numerous rescues in Europe – came to the suggestion of a British spelunker who lives near the caves and has explored them repeatedly.

Another group of speleo-thai divers was gathered by Narinthorn Na Bangchang, a Bangkok-based actress and singer who saw the boys' difficult situation on television and decided she had to do something about it.

Narinthorn flew to Mae Sai on the night of June 25 with Ruengrit Changkwanyuen, a computer scientist and a diving enthusiast who quickly became a reference person for SEALs for information on equipment and techniques Diving.

difficult only in open waters or wrecks and requires specialized training, experts say. While open water divers can return to the surface when in trouble, cave divers face dark, disorienting cavities, strong currents and low visibility in muddy water. In case of emergency, cave divers can not easily return to the surface and must carefully monitor their air supply.

Ruengrit suggested special harnesses favored by cave divers who allow swimmers to carry several air tanks attached to their sides and left their hands free. He also showed the SEAL a type of regulator that is not easily detached from its air tank by bumps against the rocks.

On June 27, he taught the SEALs the basics of diving in a nearby seaside resort. Thai SEALs are "great and competent people, but they just train for basic combat and rescue," Ruengrit said. "They had never done anything in a cave."

Ms. Narinthorn helped get the equipment, making calls to his fan club on Facebook, for everything from helmets to guiding lines. When Ms. Narinthorn asked for 200 regulators and air tanks, her fans and other donors sent over 400, while others volunteered to drive equipment from Bangkok to Mae. Sai

Heavy rainfall made the conditions perilous. Ben Reymenants, a Belgian diver based in the South Island of Phuket who was one of the people gathered by Ms. Narinthorn, remembers that in some places in the cave the current was so strong that He tore off his mask when he turned his head. 19659009] In an attempt to lower water levels, engineers put up robust pumps to drain the water. During the two and a half weeks, the boys were trapped, they pumped a billion liters of water into the farmland and surrounding rivers, enough to fill an Olympic pool 400 times.

The pumping effort allowed rescuers to lower water levels in key areas, providing dry soil for gathering areas and places where divers could refresh their supply of water. air. The volunteers were laying cables, lighting and guiding the ropes.

Volunteer divers worked alongside Thai SEALs to try to locate the boys' cave. They formed teams that advanced 200 meters at a time, provided by other divers and volunteers who formed a "daisy chain" to let the tanks pbad in and place them at the same time. intervals of 25 meters.

Divers had to climb along a chain of slippery hills, dragging on one side air boxes, and then diving into submerged tunnels on the other.

million. Reymenants and a colleague took turns with the British Scuba Diving Team to swim against the fierce tide and plow a path through winding pbadages, often feeling "like a catfish" because the loonie was not a good place to go. water was so cloudy, he recalls. one point, he took a wrong turn and got stuck; his diving partner had to pull him by the feet, he said. Another time he thought it would be too dangerous and difficult to continue and that he was about to give up, he said.

He persevered because it was clear that the Thai SEALs were preparing to continue,

"We had to dive, we had to walk, we had to climb through the rock and rock, but we had to continue to fight, "recalls Mr. Arpakorn, the commander of SEAL. "If we did not move forward, there would be no hope for the children."

British divers, coming out of the guides that Mr. Reymenants and his partner had donned, found the boys and their coach on July 2nd.

Three SEALs and a doctor entered the cave to stay with the boys; others have built a supply line for food, water, medical supplies and necessities.

The rescuers had three plans in mind: the drill crews would find a way to dig a hole in the cave where the boys were sheltering; or the water pumps could take out enough water to allow the boys to get out of the cave, baduming the weather was holding. A third option was that the boys would dive, a perilous trip they might not survive.

On July 6, two weeks after the team was trapped, the time has pbaded. One by one, the emergency plans failed. A first idea to leave the boys in place until the end of the rainy season, usually from June to November, was abandoned for health reasons. Drilling crews dug more than 100 pilot holes but were unable to locate the cavern. The pumping of the water had succeeded – three kilometers beyond the entrance to the cave had been completely drained – but forecasters had warned of heavy rains in the coming days.

Conditions in the cave accumulated under additional pressure. Oxygen levels were down to 15% in the boys' room, well below the normal 21% in the atmosphere. A level of 12% is considered seriously harmful to health.

Over the next two days, the boys' dive operation was unfolded. Nitikarn Binkasun, a Bangkok rescue worker, said that he was filling day and night air tanks, with over 500 in the cave at all times and another 200 in line waiting to be recharged by a battery of compressors on the outside of the cave. He said that he had never done anything on such a large scale. "I did not think someone would be as crazy as doing it," he said.

Inside the cave, tragedy struck a volunteer diver

Saman Gunan,

an old SEAL, died when he ran out of air while throwing air cartridges for other divers.

Captain of the Navy Anand Surawan,

who oversaw Mr. Saman's team, said that he waited for hours until the 38-year-old man came back from the cave. Around 1am, his diving partner returned alone. "We lost a life," said Captain Anand, "but 13 other people were still waiting for us and we had to get going."

Meanwhile, wild boars, many of whom can not swim, were instructed in the basics of diving and were strengthening the force. They drew the SEAL logo, with two sharks and an anchor, with the words "13 wild boars", chalked on the wall of the cave. They exchanged letters with their parents, delivered by the divers. The atmosphere was optimistic.

The SEALs sent an Australian doctor and scuba diving expert to badess the group's health in the interior, finding them in an excellent mood, says Reymenants, the Belgian diver. The doctor decided that the wild boars were strong enough to withstand a pbadage through the flooded rooms.

On Sunday, the extraction began. Thai SEALs and volunteer diving experts had created a plan that featured two experienced divers, mostly foreigners, at nine stations along the path leading to the entrance.

Each boy was placed on a stretcher and wore a full face mask. , with an air tank at his side. Each pair of divers carried the stretcher along the cave pbadages, and through submerged tunnels and open chambers, meaning that the boys did not swim or climb at all, says one person familiar with the stretcher. operation

. They panicked under the water, but were not rendered unconscious, said Thai officials.

Four boys were out Sunday, four more Monday and the last four and the team coach Tuesday. Apart from the low body temperature and some traces of pneumonia, all 13 were judged to be in relatively good condition.

Shortly after, the pump is extinguished.

-Wilawan Watcharasakwet and Warangkana Chomchuen contributed to this article.

Write to Phred Dvorak at [email protected] and Jake Maxwell Watts at [email protected]