Thai cave rescue volunteers save baby from Laos floods

AppAteu: The rescue of a baby boy, terrified and hungry after days without food, was captured in a viral video showing the infant survivor of a dam collapse in southern Laos being carefully carried through swirling flood waters and waisthigh mud.

Footage of Thai volunteers rescuing 14 people, including the baby, went viral when it was released yesterday as an increasingly inter- national relief mission scrambled to save lives in a disaster that has left scores dead and missing.

The survivors were stranded by floodwaters after they fled up a hill on Monday as the Xe-Namnoy dam broke under heavy rain, leaving several villages devastated by flash floods.

The Thai team, who waded several kilometres through rushing water carrying uprooted trees and debris to rescue the group, were fresh from efforts to help free a youth football team trapped in a cave in the north of their country.

They have now come to help out in neighbouring Laos, which is poorly equipped to deal with natural disasters of this scale.

“The boy is four months old. He didn’t have a fever but he was crying, maybe because of the cold weather,” Kengkard Bongkawong, one of the rescuers who is from Thailand’s northeast, said.

The video had been watched nearly half a million times hours after it was posted online yesterday.

Earlier this week, officials said 27 bodies had been retrieved so far, with the country’s prime minister reporting 131 others missing.

But yesterday the governor of Attapeu province Leth Xiayaphone revised down the toll to five, saying the larger number previously given was “unconfirmed information”.

Secretive Communist authorities in Laos are not used to international scrutiny and have blocked access to foreign media, complicating efforts to establish the exact death toll.

The dam disaster has also raised serious questions over Laos’ big bet on hydropower to propel it out of poverty.