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Wild boars must have passed several signs warning them not to walk further into Tham Luang. But the sky had been clear a few hours earlier on June 23, when the team of young footballers hiked into the complex with an assistant coach and disappeared with just a day of food and a few flashlights. When park authorities noticed the bicycles left by the entrance to the cave after hours, the entrance was already sealed.
Authorities in Thailand's northern Chiang Rai Province say they hope the 12 boys will be between 11 and 16 years old. and their 25 year old chaperone can still be found alive. Their anxious parents woke up Saturday on plastic chairs for the seventh day in a row. Divers prepared in a nearby tent and returned to a muddy black chasm. On the side of the hill, the police search through the tropical scrub in search of unknown chimneys, as they are called steep entrances into the caves.
What began as a small team of local responders was looking for lost boys. a multinational race against time, with hundreds of soldiers, civilians and foreign experts trying to enter the large inner chamber of the cave from every angle possible. Rescuers believe that once inside, the group traveled 1.8 miles to an intersection inside the complex, where tiny handprints and two handbags Abandoned backs were found in the mud. They probably turned left into a narrow corridor that snakes sharply before opening through a tiny passage in a master bedroom known as Pattaya.
Thai soldiers take electric cable to Tham Luang cave in Khun Nam Nang Non-Forest Park in Chiang Rai on June 26, 2018.
Lillian Suwanrumpha-AFP / Getty Images
But the afternoon brought so much rain that the hallway is filled until the summit. "We were unlucky," says Chiang Rai's governor, Narongsak Osottanakorn, speaking at TIME of a muddy camp where Thai soldiers set up their makeshift headquarters. Twenty submersible pumps were lit to flirt the road, but cool monsoon rains flooded it just as quickly. "We have never had a problem like this," says Narongsak, "there is too much mud, there is too much water."
On Wednesday, the Thai authorities asked for help. Three British expert divers rushed to the scene, followed by an Australian defense attaché. US Pacific Command deployed para-salvors and a survival specialist to "support the considerable efforts of the Thai authorities," said PACOM spokeswoman Major Cassandra Gesecki
"We will stay until the end of the day." that we find them ". the SEALS team of the Thai Navy trying to reach them since Sunday. "They are healthy, they are young," he tells TIME, confident in the survival of the group. "Moreover, they are athletes."
Divers pass blindly through the flooded passageway to reach a dead end. where they feel in the dark for opening 0.5 meters wide that could drive them to a room where they hope to find the missing huddled on a dry shelf. They tap the walls until they run out of oxygen, then they turn around, rest and try again. "The conditions are very bad," says Ben Reymenants, a Belgian diver who supports the Thai SEALS, "once you're there, you can not see anything at all." But if the coach is smart, it's possible that they could survive for two weeks without contact. Divers continue to dive
Read more: Thai divers continue to search for 12 boys and their trainers trapped in a flooded cave
Soldiers and policemen roam the north from the mountain for crevasses wide enough to drop them from above. Only one of the four that they have found has enough room for a climber. Lacking time and options, the authorities decided Thursday to drill a hole in the hill with an industrial drill provided by the country 's electricity company. But the equipment is so heavy, and the roof so thin, Narongsak says it's likely to collapse above them without any geological analyzes that could take days. On Friday, authorities sent about 20 emergency food boxes into the falls and crossed the channels, hoping they would reach them. Inside each box were a card and a pencil, with handwritten instructions to mark their location and float it in the direction of the outside world.
We do not know much about missing boys and Ekkapol Chantawong, the missing coach with them. Parents wait for good news under a banner to advise the hundreds of journalists on the site not to talk to them. Social workers say that most of them have not left the site since the search began. At first, they were inconsolable, but they began to find some calm. The country's Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan Ocha, went on Friday morning, urging them to "breathe deeply, stay calm and have faith". They pray and watch for most of the day; Buddhist and animist shrines around the site are overflowing with offerings. At one, a man kneels in front of mounds of flowers, hands of bananas, bottles of soda and a fresh pineapple. In another, someone left a white rabbit alone, chewing a cabbage leaf in a cage.
"I believe the children are still alive," says Saikhoe Sai Song, a spiritual leader of the Hmong tribe who peppered the Thai highlands. Dressed in a clean white suit and white, he seems indifferent to the hundreds of men and women in uniform who sneak into the mud to execute orders – indifferent even to the mud itself. Almost 70 years old, he comes here everyday and does what he can to save the boys. He says that he is part of a handful of people who know the ritual that can convince the spirit of the mountain to let them go.
About a thousand people are involved in the monumental effort to reach the missing team, testifying to either a miracle or a terrible tragedy. For Narongsak, the governor, every effort is welcome.
"We are starting to see progress," he says. "We work day and night, and we still have hope."
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