Glow of hope in search of a missing football team in Thailand

MAE SAI, Thailand – The effort to find 12 boys and their football coach missing in a cave in Thailand for a week accelerated Saturday. A break in the rain has facilitated flooding in the cave system and more and more experts from around the world have joined the rescue mission.

The search effort in Chiang Rai Province in the north was slow, largely because the floods prevented rescuers from crossing the caves to penetrate deeper into the cave.

There were hundreds of civilian volunteers here to help on Saturday, reports BBC News. On Saturday morning, BBC News correspondent Howard Johnson said he saw three speleologists go to the hills to try to find roads in the caverns below.

The pumping of water did not solve the problem, so increasing efforts were made to find wells on the side of the mountain that could serve as a back door to the blocked areas where the missing could be sheltering.

The boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach entered Tham Luang Nang's huge cave after a football match on June 23, but almost constant rains thwarted their search . The authorities have nevertheless expressed the hope that the group has found a dry place inside the cave to wait, and that they are still alive.

Reflecting this hope, a medical evacuation exercise was held on Saturday morning to see how long it would take to get people out of the cave, into 13 ambulances and to the nearest hospital.

Australian police and military personnel were deployed on Saturday to join other multinational teams, including US military personnel and experts from a British cave exploration club.

China sent a team of six experts to rescue and disaster in the cave, said Friday the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok. The group has experience in salvage rescues in Myanmar and Nepal, according to the Embassy statement.

A second private Chinese group, called the Green Boat Emergency, arrived on Saturday. "Our skills are search and rescue on the mountains and in the caves, we hope to help you," said Wang Xudong, a member of the group.

The governor of Chiang Rai, Narongsak Osatanakorn, said that the drop in the water level in the cave has greatly helped the rescue effort.

"Today, the situation is much better and we have high hopes, and we will be here all night," he said Saturday night.

SEAL divers from the Thai Navy were crucial for the search, but they were blocked by muddy water reaching the ceiling of the cave, forcing them to suspend their operations again and again.

As water levels dropped, they resumed their dives on Saturday, returning to a room from which they had retired earlier in the week.

In addition to pumping the flooded rooms, there have been efforts to find the source of water that floods the cave to drain or divert it.

Chaiwat Dusadeepanich of the Department of Groundwater Resources said Saturday that his team, which had been drilling for two days, found a small source of underground water near the cave.

"But the flow of water is not enough," he said. "We should dig deeper to get to the spring, but at least we found it, hope we can start pumping water from the well by the end of the day.

Hopes were also great for finding a kind of access through cracks on the side of the mountain that could lead to wells in the cave.

"Yesterday, our team climbed into a well and came in about 50 meters," said Deputy Chief of the National Police, Wirachai Songmetta. He said that the well had led to two separate rooms until now.

"Today, we will go into the second room we found and try to find passages that could lead to other rooms," said Wirachai.

On Saturday, the most prestigious monks of Thailand arrived to give a ceremony to relatives of the 13 missing, according to BBC News.

Officials said Friday that they were throwing packets of care into the wells in hopes that the missing could recover them. Each package contains food, drinks, a phone, a flashlight, candles, a lighter and a map of the cave.