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London, (AFP) – Two of three British volunteer divers who helped find a children's football team trapped in a cave complex in Thailand have a history of difficult rescues across the [19659002] Two British divers Richard William Stanton and John Volanthen walk towards the cave area. Photo: AFP
Rick Stanton and John Volanthen respectively firefighter and computer engineer, traveled a long and winding road through flooded caves to find the 12 children and their trainer, nine days after their disappearance. 19659004] "British divers Rick and John were at the forefront" of the research group, said Bill Whitehouse, of the Rescue Council of British Caves, an association of relief teams from the country.
"They managed to dive into the last section and enter the room where the missing people were on a ledge above the water," he added.
Whitehouse, who spoke briefly with the team, including a third Briton, Robert Harper, as well as other international and Thai experts, described the difficulties of the research.
"They dipped upstream in the system (caves), so they had to swim upstream or hang on the walls," he explains to the BBC
"It seems to me that ", He said, adding that the time of immersion was about three hours
Stanton, a firefighter from Coventry in central England, and Volanthen, an engineer in Bristol, in the south-west of the country, they are not novices in difficult dives
Stanton, who is in his fifties, told a local newspaper in 2012 that his greatest achievement was to save six British soldiers trapped in caves in Mexico
He and Volanthen also helped in 2010 to find Eric Establie, an experienced French speleologist who was trapped underground in the Ardeche region of southern France.
Unfortunately, Establie is dead.
Rescue missions in the caves are quite impressive, but the hardest was that of France, "said Stanton in the interview, on the occasion of the decoration of Queen Elizabeth II.
"Me and another diver were there for 10 days and it was very stressful all the time, it was a very dangerous dive and a very dangerous cave," he added.
He insisted at that time on a hobby that began at age 18, after watching a documentary on television.
In Thailand, the team avoided the media, with Volanthen saying only to reporters "we have a job to do" when he arrived on the site
