Settle in, boys told
FOOD and medical help reached 13 members of a Thai youth football team found rake-thin but alive, huddled on a ledge deep inside a flooded cave nine days after they went missing, as the focus yesterday turned to how to get them out.
The Thai military says it will provide the boys with food that can sustain them for months and also give them diving lessons.
The boys were discovered kilometres into the pitch-black and waterlogged Tham Luang network of caves in the country’s monsoon-drenched north.
“How many are you? . . . 13 . . . brilliant,” shouts a British diver, in an astonishing exchange captured in a video of the moment help finally reached the youngsters.
The incredible footage showed the emaciated boys in baggy mud-slicked football jerseys, shielding their eyes from the divers’ torches.
Food and medical supplies — including high-calorie gels and paracetamol — reached them yesterday as rescuers prepared for a prolonged extraction operation, with several chambers still submerged.
“(We will) prepare to send additional food to be sustained for at least four months and train all 13 to dive while continuing to drain the water,” Navy Captain Anand Surawan said.
The astonishing rescue sparked jubilation across the country after a massive and gruelling search and rescue operation was beset by heavy downpours and fast-moving floodwaters.
“We called this ‘mission impossible’ because it rained every day . . . but with our determination and equipment we fought nature,” Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osotta- nakorn said yesterday. The boys were discovered by British divers some 400m from where they were believed to be stranded several kilometres inside the cave.
In the video, posted on the Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page, one of the boys shouts to the rescuers: “We are hungry. shall we go outside?” In response the British diver says: “Many, many people are coming . . . we are the first,” in reference to the vast and complex rescue operation.
The harrowing task of getting the boys out is complicated by the fact that they are in a weak state and are not experienced divers.
Experts said it could take weeks — if not months — to get them out with much of the cave still submerged by floods.
If diving proves impossible, there is an outside chance they can be drilled out or wait for waters to recede and walk out on foot.
But the clock is ticking with heavy rains forecast to return this week as the monsoon season bites deeper.
The “Wild Boar” team became trapped on June 23 after heavy rains blocked the cave’s main entrance.