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The Washington Post | Shibani Mahtani, Steve Hendrix and Timothy McLaughlin
MAE SAI, Thailand – The US Air Force officer stood with three other rescuers on July 8 when they finally felt a fort tugging on the line that ran from their gloved hands into the pool of water at their feet, a chain all the way through the cave flooded to the room where 12 young footballers and their assistant coach were trapped for 16 days .
The call "Fish on!" echoed the stone, alerting lifeguards in the passage that their unfair mission was ongoing.
"This was the code word that someone was approaching," said the officer, who spoke to the Washington Post with the permission of his superiors on the condition that he "did not get it. he will not be identified.
The first boy would emerge from the water in 10 minutes. "Everyone's heart has stopped," he said.
It was the moment that they were all waiting, but that no one had wanted. This meant that no new outings would be discovered or drilled, and that the members of the Wild Boars football team, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old assistant coach could not leave behind. Another way. The incessant rains pumped daily deluges into the tunnels, constantly threatening to overwhelm the battery of borrowed pumps and overwhelm the boys' tiny hideaway as a horrified world watched.
This meant that the air was starting to faint, with oxygen levels falling close to the prohibition levels. Everything was brought back to the latter, the best, most terrible option that planners thought would mean the death of some of the boys, none of whom could swim. It meant pulling a terrified child through the icy waters of the narrow, flooded, 2.5-mile gauntlet that had already killed a diving expert.
"You could hear everyone stop breathing," said the officer. 19659003] The first boy would come out, but would he come out alive?
Seize the World
The unprecedented rescue operation that seized the world and submerged this mountainous outpost of northern Thailand for three weeks. told here on the basis of interviews with more than 30 participants – started on June 23 with a multitude of text messages: Many sons were late for dinner.
Nopparat Khanthavong, the 37-year-old Wild Boars coach, knew her After the final whistle, Nopparat checked his phone and saw at least 20 uneasy messages from his players' parents asking why Assistant coach had taken some of the youngest players for a bike ride on Saturday.
the cyclists had returned. When he learned that the children had persuaded his assistant to take them to the Tham Luang Nang cave, not far from six miles away, he went that way. The cave was popular, but Nopparat, standing under a clouded sky, knew that the rainy season was not the time to be in those endless passages and prone to flooding.
He stopped to consider abandoned bicycles around the entrance and worsening rainfall rushing down a lush wooded mountain slope. He ran inside, shouting the names of his assistant and the boys.
"I did not have a flashlight," Nopparat said. "In a few meters, I could not see anything."
But soon he saw lights coming out of the depths. It was not his team; it was a group of park employees who had also seen the bicycles and had gone to investigate.
"If your players are there, they are trapped," he was told, imploring him to calm down. Several hundred meters down, they had found water, blocking the passage and getting up quickly.
When Napasorn Taturkarn's phone rang, the mayor of Baan Moo 9 was with a group of neighbors. They practiced Thai music for the funerals and weddings she planned for the village of 700 houses less than two miles from the entrance to the cave.
It was his friend, Nopparat. "I think my boys are in the cave," he said. "Can you help?"
The first responders in a crisis that would soon captivate millions of people were the musicians of his court, said Napasorn. At the entrance to the cave, they found Nopparat frantically pacing the fading light.
"He looked very worried," says Napasorn.
While Nopparat and the villagers made another trip, Napasorn called Siam Ruamjai. volunteer rescue team based in a pink building just a few miles from the main road.
"I've already been in the cave," said Niwat Tumploy, 27, who answered the call. "But only when it was dry.In the rains, it's a bad place."
Ten volunteers jumped into an ambulance and the back of a van. At the cave, five joined the growing crowd at the entrance; five entered, including Niwat. The rain had become a torrent. The water in the passage was up to their ankles even before they reached the water stalemate. Within two hours, it would be almost their size.
"There was nothing we could do," Niwat said. "We needed the big ones."
The SEAL team arrives
The governor of Chiang Rai Province, Narongsak Osatanakorn, a few weeks to be transferred to another part of the country, was preparing to go to bed . word of missing children. Governor of Chiang Rai Narongsak Osotthanakorn (L) expresses at a press conference in an improvised press center in the Mae Sai district of Chiang. Rai province on July 11, 2018. YE AUNG THU / AFP / Getty Images
But after changing pajamas to drive the 38 miles to the cave, he knew differently. Within hours, the first members of the SEAL team from the Thai Navy arrived and entered the water.
Thai SEALS practice open water rescues. They were not prepared for muddy, dark currents between sharp rock walls. Feeling their way along the jagged edges, they turned around. A larger group tried again, but when they reached an intersection in the narrow passage, they were disconcerted. The cave was a labyrinth and the water was rising.
"We could no longer fight with time or water," said Aparkorn Youkongkaew, the commander of the Thai navy SEAL.
A radio reporter arrived from Mae. Sai; word began to spread. During the day, people brought food, a body of volunteer cooks that grew to more than a hundred. A truck arrived with a small industrial pump, which the workers transported to the edge of the deluge, the good idea on the wrong scale.
"They were pumping, but they were not enough to handle so much water," said Kobchai Boonyaorana, a Thai disaster management official. "The rains were getting harder – we needed more."
The call for the pumps came out, and they started arriving from all over the country. Worawut Imchit spent the night at a shrimp farm 850 miles south, four flat trucks carrying four massive pumps that circulate water through the ponds.
"It was three days without sleep for me," Imchit said. "I ran like crazy, up and down, back and forth between the pumps to make sure everything was working fine."
In three days more than 40 machines had arrived, Kobchai said. At over 400,000 gallons at the time, the pumping power stabilized the water level and lowered the drier days. Going down, he flooded the fields with 128 farmers, destroying their rice crops for the year.
Inside, divers said they were working without any sense of the day or time in devouring darkness
. cellar, the radio links burst. Teams used hand-written notes, running messengers and swimming relay announcements. Commanders lost contact with their men for hours.
Asaf Zmirly, an Israeli living in Bangkok, arrived with Israeli radios that could operate inside the cave, adjusting to the topography and creating a chain-shaped Daisy. network. Just the superficial incursion that he made into the water to build the system was discouraging.
"If you look to your right or left, the mask will be torn off your face," said Zmirly
. to talk to each other, the researchers did not know where to look or how to find their way. The SEALs would be essentially lost after dives of several hours, without any sign of the young boys. On June 27, rapidly rising waters filled the cavern – so fast it would be like flooding the house in 10 minutes.
"Our three hours of drainage are nothing," said the commander of the Thai Navy. They found the help of an unlikely expert
Help from cave expert
Vernon Unsworth, a British insurance consultant and amateur caver, obsessed Tham Luang's cave system. He had explored miles for a decade, planning trips between England and Thailand during the rainy season. He was convinced that the Thais were looking in the wrong place. Unsworth had definite ideas about where to look and who to do the research.
"Time is running out," he wrote in a letter to the governor, according to Unsworth's wife. He listed the names of three British underground divers whom he ranked as the best in the world. "Please contact them through the UK Embassy ASAP."
The Thai government accepted.
Within days, his Britons were in the cave, and a search that most had abandoned was futile. On July 2, Rick Stanton, a former firefighter, and John Volanthen, a computer consultant, used Unsworth cards to reach a room more than 2 1/2 miles from the entrance. When their headlights emerged from the water, they reflected in 13 pairs of eyes that had not seen sunlight for more than 200 hours.
The boys and their trainer were alive after nine days of black launching isolation, six without any food. Clinging to a slippery slope 15 feet above the current, they had licked droplets of water from the limestone walls. Their assistant coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, a former Buddhist monk novice, taught them to meditate to keep calm
"How many of you? Thirteen? Brilliant," said Volanthen. He assured them: "Navy SEALs will come tomorrow, with food and doctors and everything. "
Instantly, a search was turned into a rescue.Hundreds of volunteers and military clogged the mountain roads up to the cave, an ad hoc battalion of experts and adventurers from around the world.
More than 1,500 journalists descended into the small town to feed insatiable interest for teammates, some of whom were migrants stateless from a lawless area of neighboring Myanmar.The boys, supposedly lost, now had a chance to get out.Their families, who had been watching in a muddy encampment outside the cave , were jubilant [19659003] Piyada Chermuen, 16, is from the same village in Myanmar as Adul Sam-on, the English-speaking boy who can communicate with the British Plunger. They lived in the same Christian church with 20 other refugees, most of whom were sent to Thailand by their parents to go to school
Adul, 14, one of the best players of the Wild Boars, speaks five languages. 19659003] "We were praying for him when the teacher came in and said that they had been found," Piyada said. Outside of his class, a series of photos of Adul hung like prayer flags. "Thank God, we applauded so loudly."
At the cave, the activity exploded. Thai police set up satellite parking areas and shuttle volunteers – more than 9,000 of them. Commanders established one-way traffic lanes in the cave. More deeply in the room, four SEALs watched the boys while their comrades carried rations and water
But how to help?
Ideas came from every corner: a network of corrugated pipes that boys could crawl through; float them in body bags. The billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk began building a custom kids mini club
But rescuers were focusing on three possibilities: diving, drilling and waiting
Several teams roamed the slopes to drill an access hole. After testing over 100 sites, only 18 were judged even viable remotely. And even drilling in the right hole could cause a deadly collapse.
Meanwhile the rains were quickly dismissed by many rescuers. Unsworth warned them that the floods of the northern Thailand monsoon season can last until winter, raising the possibility that children and their guards would be perched on the cold, dripping slope. for five months. Feeding them would require about 2000 meals. Oxygen was found to be a critical need two days later. With more adults in the cave, the levels of O2 were diving.
Saman Kunam, a retired Thai Navy diver, was working to solve this problem on the night of July 6th. He and his team set up oxygen tanks along the flooded passage, with tubes for the hose to the boys' room. Navy commanders walked outside the mouth of the cave as the hours dragged on without the team telling them anything. The divers finally emerged seven hours later, carrying a lifeless body: Saman's own tank was exhausted.
After officials announced his death at an early morning briefing, even some families of boys questioned the survival of their sons. They suggested that waiting for the dry season could be the best, said Nopparat, the coach, at the Washington Post. The jubilation that broke out after the boys were found has passed.
Prayuth Jetiyanukarn, the abbot of the Buddhist monastery at the top of the hill where the assistant coach has often slept, wrote a short letter to the young man, slipped it into a plastic tube to a Thai diver who promised to carry it.
"Be patient, try to build your encouragement from within," he read, according to the Abbot, "This energy will give you the power to survive."
Inside the cave, however, were 12 football players, still trapped in deteriorating conditions.Preparations for a release of water were being built.
Rescuers built a model of the narrow passageway with chairs.They practiced with local boys of the right size in a school swimming pool, perfecting the muscle memory they would need in the cave, said the officer of the US Air Force
inside the cavern. "They were the ones who had the least need to convince," said Major Charles Hodges, who led the US team and was so new to his new position that his business had not arrived at Okinawa, Japan
On July 6, the US Army and the Thai SEALs made a plan concocted jointly with senior officials of the Thai government. The Minister of the Interior was among those who arrived at the entrance of the cave as a cortege. Using Unsworth's maps and his understanding of the topography and hydrology of the chamber, they urged about sixty representatives of the civilian government: it was time to act, even they strongly believed that some boys would not survive swimming. Their message: Save most of them now or lose them all soon.
"You can wait until this time window is over," Hodges told Thai officials, "and I can almost guarantee you that all will die."
The Thai Interior Minister asked Hodges and another eight to go to a private room. He wanted to hear their plan again. Hodges explained both parts of the mission, stressing that it would take a whole day of preparation before the first boy was shot through the water. Thais would continue to search for a drilling site if the dive plan failed.
The Rescue
They got their green light.
On July 7 – two weeks to the day since the disappearance of the boys – the rescue plan, although not publicly recognized, was in progress
Air tanks were hidden along the muddy passages, enough for the 12 boys, their coach, the four SEALs who had integrated them and the 18 divers to take them out. The riggers stretched a bunch of static ropes to hoist the stretches like cocoons over vast fields of jagged rocks.
On July 8 at 10:30, the core team of 18 divers was in the water: Among them, British, Thai SEALS and Dive buddies from the Gulf of Thailand seaside resort of Koh Tao.
A group made their way to the last room. By the time the divers emerged, players and coach Ek, as Ekapol was known, had elected the boy who would go first. Officials refused to identify him, but friends and relatives said that he was Mongkol Boonpiem, a 13-year-old boy with a lucky name: "the auspicious one".
The wet suit, the smallest one, did not fit its emaciated frame as it should be. They prepared the mask, attached to a tank filled with 80 percent oxygen. The rich mixture would saturate his tissues, making it easier to revive when he stopped breathing.
Richard Harris, Australian anesthetist and caving diver, gave the boy a final evaluation. The boy was given what the Thai and American participants described variously as a muscle relaxant or an anti-anxiety medication. A panic attack in a chokepoint no bigger than a manhole would almost certainly be fatal.
Finally, the boy was swaddled in a flexible plastic stretcher – similar to a tortilla wrap, Hodges said – to confine his limbs and protect him from the walls of cheese-grater. And then, with his teammates watching, they shot him under cloudy water.
The original plan had called two divers – one in front of the stretcher, the other behind. But this configuration was discarded as being too bulky for shoulder width passages and elbow turns.
"Having this second person did not give you anything," said the US Air Force officer
. a body-to-body to clinch as much as possible from swimming, the officer said, handing the boy over to a new diver after his designated stretch. Keeping the child warm was essential.
"Even then, divers would be cold," said the Air Force officer. "It's a long time in the water, and the water flows constantly because of the flow, which evacuates the heat of the body even if you wear a diving suit."
The worst part Bathing was the last, a deep tubular lowering that held water like a sink trap. All in all, it was a grueling two-hour trek through mud-filled passages.
"He crawls in mud and underwater tunnels, and you can not see your hands," said Erik Brown, a Canadian diver on the 18th.
But that was the end of the the most lethal part.
"Fishing on it!"
Divers lifted the boy, and the crew at the water's edge pulled him out. Their dry and final passage was lined with more than 100 rescuers. One of them, the United States Air Force officer, stuck his ear to the boy's mask
He was breathing. And now, rescuers could too,
"It was a huge weight on our shoulders," said the officer.
They had three more that day, four the next day and five the last. They were hard to distinguish with their masks, with the exception of Coach Ek, who still had his wolf ring on one finger. At each repetition, they became more effective.
On July 10, the lights of a helicopter shone on the city of Mae Sai, its rustling breaking the night sky. Celebrations erupted – the last boy was alive, en route to the hospital. Rescuers opened beers, hugged each other and exchanged shots.
Then they got trapped. Four SEALs from the Thai Navy were still in the deepest chambers, making their way past volunteering to watch the boys
A disaster almost hit
Fast Escape
The pumps had retained water until the last moments, when one of the industrial-sized pipes broke, pouring water into the cave . "The guys started diving on that hill and trying to get out," said the Air Force officer, who was the last person to come out of the cave. "It was a little risky."
In the city, drivers honked horns in the streets. Family members rushed to the eighth floor of Chiang Rai Hospital, an hour away. There, crowds gathered behind the barriers that surrounded the entrance and cheered every ambulance that arrived. Inside, the doctors said the wild boars were in good health and they broadcast videos of their group.
After 21 days together in the dark, they were still side by side in the bright fluorescence of a welcoming world. 19659003] – – –
Panaporn Wutwanich, Jittrapon Kaicome and Katcha Rerngsamut contributed to this report.
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