Diving lessons for Thai boys before cave rescue
teams in northern Thailand were giving crash courses in swimming and diving on Wednesday as part of complex preparations to extract a young soccer squad trapped in a cave, and hoping for a swift end to their harrowing 11-day ordeal.
Divers, medics, counsellors and Thai navy SEALS were with the 12 schoolboys and their 25-year-old coach, providing medicines and food while experts assessed conditions for getting them out safely, a task the government said would not be easy.
“The water is very strong and space is narrow. Extracting the children takes a lot of people,” Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters. “Now we are teaching the children to swim and dive,” he said, adding that if water levels fell and the flow weakened, they would be taken out quickly.
By late on Tuesday, about 120 million litres of water had been pumped out, or about 1.6 million every hour.
It was unclear what the options were to get the “Wild Boar” team out of the Tham Luang caves in Chiang Rai province and how they would be steered through
CHIANGRAI:Rescue
tight, fluid conditions and uncertain weather. Experts say divers have required three hours to reach the boys, located about 4 km from the mouth of the cave. A group of about 30 divers in wetsuits was seen preparing kit and heading for the caves on Wednesday, accompanied by military personnel and a foreign cave expert.
A video released by the SEALS showed two rescuers seated on an elevated part of the cave beside boys wrapped in emergency foil blankets who appeared to be in good spirits, occasionally laughing. A torch is shone on each boy, who says hello and introduces himself with head bowed and palms pressed together in a traditional “wai” greeting.
A young player wears what appears to be the red jersey of the England soccer team in Tuesday’s World Cup second-round victory over Colombia. Another wears the blue shirt of English team Chelsea.
The group was discovered by the SEALS and two British cave diving experts on Monday, having been incommunicado since June 23, when a post-practice outing went awry, prompting the high-profile search and rescue effort. News that the team had survived sparked relief.