‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE’

Thai team saved from cave

There are moments when the world really does seem like a small place — a global village where everyone comes together for a common goal. That’s certainly been the case with the Thai soccer team of 12 boys aged 11 to 16 and their 25-year-old coach, who were trapped in a massive cave system that became flooded after they went exploring.

Along with the now-famous British divers who first found the group alive after the team went missing following a soccer practice, and the brave Thai Navy SEALS who devised the daring rescue of the weakened boys, is a company founded in Canada and filled with many Calgarians that played a vital role in the successful rescue in the 10-kilometre deep Tham Luang cave system in Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province.

Ivan Maddox, an executive vice-president of Intermap — a world leader in 3-D and geospacial mapping — says staff around the world are “so, so happy about this very best of outcomes” for the soccer team.

Maddox, who earned his geomatics engineering degree from the University of Calgary in 1996, says “we’re doing a lot of interviews so there’s no time for popping champagne corks, but we’re happy to celebrate this way because one of the things about creating these geospacial data sets and building awareness about it is you can bring about these beneficial results.”

In a typically humble Canadian way, Maddox spent much of the interview praising the Thai Navy SEALS and others.

But it also became clear that without the company’s super detailed mapping, none of the rescues could have taken place. On Tuesday, the last four of the 12 boys and their coach made it out of the cave that became treacherous after a rainstorm flooded tunnels.

Patrick Blott, Intermap’s CEO, said the company — which has all Canadian-led teams around the world — was able to give the first 3-D maps of the cave area within three hours of getting called by Thai agencies seeking help.

“When we got the initial call, which was on the 27th — four days after the boys went missing — at that time, the rain was building and the water levels were rising by a foot every hour,” says Blott, who was born in Ottawa and grew up in Toronto. “The authorities had no idea where the kids were, all they had were soccer cleats and bicycles left at the entrance to the cave. It was very, very grim and it was hard to have any hope, but we threw everything that we had at it,” Blott said from the company’s corporate headquarters in Denver, Colo.

Using sensors — such as microwave, radar wave, infrared and gravitational field technology — that collect information the human eye can’t see, Intermap was able to provide rescue teams with precise information of an area that had never been properly mapped before, including how deep and wide the cave was, where the water entry and exit points were, and what happens if there is a storm surge.

The company was even able to predict where the boys might have been sheltering themselves — a muddy slope rising many metres above the water, where they were able to stay dry.

“Information like that is really, really hard to get but really critical if you are the Navy SEALS on the ground who have to go into that cave,” added Blott.

According to news reports, Thai authorities initially considered leaving the boys in the caves until October, with expert divers bringing them food, water and light, to wait out the annual rainy season. After all, even a highly trained former Thai Navy SEAL, Saman Gunan, 38, died after he volunteered to deliver oxygen tanks to the kids — an indication of just how treacherous the terrain was to navigate for the children — none whom can swim.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science or what. All the 13 Wild Boars are now out of the cave,” said the Navy SEAL unit on its Facebook page.

Blott thinks it’s a mixture of the two.

“From where it started, it’s a miracle. Between then and now, the turnaround is extraordinary,” said Blott, who is also chairman of the board of Intermap, which was the main contractor on NASA’s space shuttle program that mapped the Earth in 3-D for the first time.

With two Navy SEALS per child, including special masks for the children, the nine-hour trek and swim out of the caves was successfully completed in three separate sessions in a race against rising waters caused by more rain.

Maddox says were it not for the U of C’s Schulich School of Engineering, this happy outcome might never have happened.

“The University of Calgary is a world leader in geomatics engineering,” said Maddox, 45, who visits Calgary at least twice a year with his wife, Monique, and their two daughters to visit his mother-in-law.

“The U of C doesn’t just lead the geomatic engineering industry, it defines the industry on a global scale,” said Maddox.

He says his entire family has been absorbing every detail of the Wild Boar team, including eight-year-old Clio and five-yearold Carmen.

“When I first described this to our girls over the dinner table, they got really quiet and then they asked how old the boys were and about their soccer team — they are both on soccer teams — so their imaginations were firing and going into dark places in this cave as they empathized with those boys. It was powerful to watch, so they are thrilled, like the whole world is thrilled.”