BRAVERY AND LUCK WERE NEEDED IN EQUAL MEASURES TO SAVE 13
swam for 3km till they reached a T-junction in the network known as Sam Yak.
“There, we found the footprints of the kids,” he said. And there began the beginnings of belief.
Still, Sam Yak was flooded and the SEALs did not have cave skills. “We are seamen,” said Deputy SEALs commander, Captain Anan Sudawan. “We don’t know about caves.”
They needed specialists. Not just military types, but a ration. On Monday, July 2, they went through Sam Yak, feeling their way through black water for five hours.
And then came the first of two miracles. The divers shone their torches on an incredible scene at a place 1700m beyond Sam Yak: not bodies, but humans — children and coach — huddled on a meagre 5m x 2m ledge. Cold, weak, anxious. But alive. All of them.
The words are now famous: “How many of you? Thirteen? Brilliant!” but the inexperienced SEALs took 23 hours to return after reaching the boys. And only three returned.
One of them, Lt-Colonel Park Lohachoon, a diving medic, had chosen to stay with them. Lt-Col Park, the last man out of the cave when the rescue was completed, played a role of equal standing to Dr Harris and the Brit divers.
Medics had anticipated the team might all be suffering pneumonia, but they had a bigger problem: the kids were using up oxygen fast and replacing it with carbon dioxide.
As Governor Narongsak Osotthanakorn said: “If the level of oxygen got to 12 per cent, the boys would go into a coma. Normal people need oxygen at 20 per cent, but they were on 15 per cent. And water was coming. Here in the north, it’s like a waterfall.”
Two Thai SEALs went in with four international divers. The foreign divers were now managing the route and returning within three or four hours but the Thai divers were taking longer.
“My men, after six or seven hours, they hadn’t returned. I thought they might be taking a rest. And then a body came back.” Petty Officer first-class